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The Proceedings of the South Place Ethical Society Vol. 108 No. 7 £1.50 September 2003

tee • ti GC Chairman Terry Mullins (left) played the 'desert island discs' chosen by long- time stalwarts of the Ethical Society's South Place Sunday Concerts, Mary and Martin Lined. 20 July 2003

ANNUAL REUNION OF THE KINDRED SOCIETIES Keynote Speaker: , MP on the theme of peace. Reports from BHA, GALHA, IHEU, NSS, PL, RP, Sonnenberg Soc, T Paine Soc., * Refreshments * Music by Derek Marcus * 1430 Sunday 21 SEPTEMBER 2003 All welcome

DEMYSTIFYING CREATIVITY Prof Margaret Boden OBE 3

HOW CHANGED PROUST' S LIFE Cynthia .1. Gamble 7

H. PERRIS, (1866-1920) ETHICIST AND RADICAL Robert Gomme

VIEWPOINT: Beatrice Feder 21

COLIN McCALL - A LIFELONG FREETHINKER Bill Mellroy 22 OBITUARY: BILL HORSLEY, EDITH WASHBROOK 23 ETHICAL SOCIETY EVENTS 24 SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY Conway Hall Humanist Centre 25 Red Lion Square, WCIR 4RL. Tel: 020 7242 8034 Fax: 020 72428036 Website: www.ethicalsoc.org.uk [email protected] Officers Chairman of the GC: Terry Mullins. Hon. Representa ve:Don Liversedge. Vice Chairman: John Rayner. Registrar: Edmund McArthur. Editor, Ethical Record: Norman Bac ac SPES Staff Administrative Secretary to the Society: Marina Ingham Tel: 020 7242 8034 Librarian1Programme Coordinator:Jennifer Jeynes M.Sc. Tel: 020 7242 8037 Hall Manager:Peter Vlachos M.A. For Hall bookings: Tel: 020 7242 8032 Caretakers' Office: Tel: 020 7242 8033 New Member We are pleased to welcome Susan Wilsmorc, London WCI to the Society.

Obituary We regret to report the deaths of Bill Horsley, Edith Washbrook and Colin McCall. Their obituaries are on pages 22/3.

Photo: Martin Harris Barbara Smoker at her 80th birthday party in conversation with Jonathan Miller Conway Hall, 10 July 2003 SPES Evening Class THE CASE AGAINST CREATIONISM. Tutor: Peter Hearty 1900-210(1 (a)The Ace of ihe Earth - Tues 21 Ocl. (h)Evolulion - Tues 28 0c1 Admission Free - Tea

Ethical Record, September; 2003 DEMYSTIFYING CREATIVITY Professor Margaret Roden 01W University of

6th Skene Lecture to the Ethical Society 20 July 2003

Most people assume that there's something deeply mysterious about creativity. Some, like the late Bernard Levin (writing in ) even attribute creative ideas to a divine spark. I'm confident that members of the South Place Ethical Society wouldn't do that! But perhaps some would attribute creative ideas to "intuition"? Well, in my view "intuition- is the name of a question, not an answer. What we need to know is how inflation works.

A fortiori, most people (and here, perhaps many Ethical Record readers would be included) take it for granted that there can be no interesting relation only utter incompatibility and contradiction -- between machines and creativity. Admit that the "machines" are computers, and the cat really seems to be out of the bag. Surely, one must be having some sort of a brainstorm, to connect these topics?

Well, no. Computers and creativity make interesting partners with respect to three rather different sorts of project. One is understanding human creativity in scientific terms. Another is trying to produce machine-creativity. And the third is using • computers to aid one's own creativity.

First things first. Human creativity is something of a mystery, not to say a paradox. One new idea may be creative, while another is merely new: what's the difference? And how is creativity possible?

Artists and scientists rarely know how their original ideas come about. They mention intuition, but can't say how it works. Most psychologists can't tell us much about it, either. What's more, many people assume that there will never be a scientific theory of creativity -- for how could science possibly explain fundamental novelties? The very notion seems to be a contradiction in terms.

The Types of Creativity Creativity falls broadly into three types. First, it may involve the unfamiliar combination of familiar ideas. (Think of many examples of poetic imegery, or of collages in visual .) Provided that those ideas can be associated in sensible, intelligbile (though unexpected) ways, we'll speak of creativity.

Computers aren't much help in understanding this, because although they can embody theories of combination (e.g. associations within neural networks), they can't evaluate the novel combination reliably. That's not because they're 'tin cans: Rather, it's because the world knowledge needed to appreciate a novel combination is typically far too great for us to be able to provide it to the computer. For example, imagine doing a collage (of pictures and text) combining the topics of music and . Any imaginative (sic) result would be unintelligible to someone from a wholly different culture, who's never heard of Venice, has never seen Venetian or gondolas, and knows nothing about the Western tradition of music in which Venice once played an important part. A fortiori, such a person couldn't think up the collage in the first place. And nor could a computer -- unless we cheated, and simply fed in the appropriate images and text-snippets.

Ethical Record, September, 2003 3 The other types of creativity involve the exploration, and in the most interesting cases the transformation, of conceptual spaces in people's minds. Conceptual spaces are styles of thought. They include ways of writing prose or poetry; genres of sculpture, painting, or music; theories in chemistry, biology, or mathematics; habits of couture: systems of choreography ... in short, any reasonably disciplined way of thinking.

Within a given conceptual space, many thoughts are possible -- even if some of them are never thought. Others are impossible. If you are skilfully writing a limerick, iambic pentameters simply cannot drop from your pen. But if you want to write a new sort of limerick, or a non-limerick somehow grounded in that familiar style, then maybe blank verse -- or something previously unthought of -- could play a role. The deepest cases of creativity involve someone's thinking something which, with respect to the relevent conceptual space present in their minds, they could not have thought before.

The obvious next question is how this supposedly impossible idea could possibly come about. And the answer is that the creator must change the pre-existing style in some way. It must be tweaked, or even radically transformed, so that thoughts are now possible which (within that space) weren't conceivable before.

To understand how this can happen, we must understand clearly what conceptual spaces are, and what sorts of mental processes could explore and modify them. Styles of thinking are studied by literary , by musicologists, and by historians of art, fashion, and science. And they are appreciated by us. all. But intuitive appreciation, and even lifelong scholarship, may not make their structure clear. (An architectural historian, for instance, said of 's Prairie Houses that their "principle of unity" is "occult".)

Artificial Intelligence This is the first point where computers come in. Conceptual spaces and ways of transforming them to produce new ones, can be described by using computational concepts. These concepts are drawn from artificial intelligence (the study of how to make computers do what real minds can do), and they enable us to do psychology in a new way. The structure of tonal harmony, or the "grammar" of Prairie Houses, can be clearly expressed, and specific ways of exploring the relevant space can be tried out. Methods ("heuristics") for navigating, and even for changing, highly-structured spaces can be compared. This approach gives us a way of seeing more clearly into the rich subtleties of the human mind.

What of the second link between machines and creativity? Can computers at least appear to be creative? Well, several programs already exist which can explore a given space in acceptable ways. A computational grammar has not only shown what the principle of unity of Prairie Houses is, but has generated designs for new ones, previously undreamed-of. Some programs can generate thousands of line- in a certain style, pleasing enough (if hung on one's walls) to he spontaneously remarked upon by unsuspecting visitors. Others improvize unpredictable melodies, and accompaniments, from a modern-jazz chord sequence. Others come up with (occasionally, new) scientific hypotheses, or suggest experiments to test them.

A few programs can even transform their conceptual habitat, alter their own rules, so that interesting ideas result. Many of these ideas, to be sure, were already known to human beings (though not specifically prefigured within the program's initial

4 Ethical Record, September, 2003 conceptual space). But at least one entirely unknown mathematical theorem has been suggested by a computer, whose programmer had never even heard of the branch of mathematics concerned. The program, using its initial concepts and its exploratory/transformational rules, its own way into the new mathematical space -- by creating that space for itself.

In all those cases, the computer appeals to be creative. That is, it generates novel structures which would be counted as creative if produced by a human being. Whether these computers, or any others you care to imagine, are "really" creative is an entirely different matter. It's not a scientific question, but a philosophical one -- and very controversial, at that. I shan't go into it here. I'll merely say that even if one believes that no conceivable computer could be really creative, one can still use them -- both their successes and their failures -- to help us think clearly about human creativity, and how it works.

Evolutionary Programmes The that machines and originality are related involves the use of computers to help our own creativity. Most readers, I imagine, already use computers to aid their creativity: we all know how much easier it is to write, given a powerful word-processor. But that isn't the sort of help I mean.

A number of graphic artists, film-animators, and industrial designers, are using computers as genuine partners in their creative quest. The machines in question execute "evolutionary" programs, continually making random changes in their current rules so that entire new forms, new species, of structure result. The human being continually chooses the ones he or she finds most interesting, and the machine concentrates on them.

For instance, an image-generating program (exhibited al the Pompidou Centre in , some years ago) uses self-modifying "genetic algorithms- (modelled on biological mutations) to generate new images, or patterns, from pre-existing ones. At each "generation", the selection of the "fittest" examples is done by the programmer - - or by someone fortunate enough to be visiting his office while the program is being run. That is, the human being selects the images which are aesthetically pleasing, and these are used to "breed" the next generation. The programmer's aim, in this case, is to provide an interactive graphics-environment, in which human and computer can cooperate in generating otherwise unimaginable images. (Don't ask Father Christmas to put this program in your PC-stocking: it runs only on a massive parallel machine costing millions of dollars.)

In addition to the unpredictability resulting from randomness, these computer- generated images often cause a deeper form of surprise. It is as if, besides our being unable predict heads or tails when tossing a coin, the coin sometimes showed a wholly unexpected design. If one compares a parent-image with some of its descendants (or even some of its immediate offspring), one may be amazed by the difference. The change(s) effected to the earlier image on the way to the later one sometimes seem like relatively unadventurous exploration, or tweaking. The colour of what is clearly the same image may have been altered, for instance, and/or the lines may obviously have been blurred. Sometimes, however, one cannot say, merely by looking at the chosen image-pair, how they are related -- or if they are related at all. The one appears to be a radical transformation of the other, or even something entirely different.

From the artist's point of view, such continual surprises can be too much of a Ethical Record, Septembei; 2003 5 good thing. The program described above wasn't written by an artist, but by a computer scientist. Evolutionary programs written by professional artists are typically very much more constrained. That is, the random mutations that can be made are less fundamental. They merely tweak the conceptual space of the current-generation program, rather than radically transforming it. The reason, of course, is that the human artist has picked a portion of visual (or maybe musical) space which he or she finds aesthetically interesting, and is using the computer to help explore that space in a disciplined way. Go to a retrospective exhibition of some painter's : you won't find many random changes -- if any. What you'll find is evidence of a careful exploration of particular aspects of a particular style ... which is abandoned, or perhaps transformed, only when the artist feels that its aesthetic potential holds no further surprises.

In sum, it's possible to say something useful about how human creativity works. We can't predict it in detail, or even (usually) explain it in every detail after it's happened. But the reason for that isn't some ineluctable mystery. Rather, the reason is the subtle complexity and richness of the human mind. As for computers, they can sometimes do apparently creative things, and some can help us to do so too. Not least, a computational approach can clarify many psychological questions about our own creative powers.

I I've persuaded you that how creativity is possible can be broadly explained in scientific terms. -- As for the wondrous detail, that's not the concern of science.

Biographical Note: Margaret A. Boden is Research Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of Sussex (Centre fiff Research in Cognitive Science).

She is a Fellow (and past Vice-President) of the British Academy and the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, and a member of the Academia Europaea. In 2002 she was awarded an OBE "for services to cognitive science". She holds degrees in medical sciences, philosophy, and psychology (including a ScD and a Harvard PhD), and honorary DSc s from the Universities of Bristol and Sussex.

Her writing has been translated into 17 foreign languages, and she has given lectures and media-inteniiews across North and South America, Europe, India, the USSR, and the Pacific. She is currently writing a history of cognitive science, to be published by University Press. Margaret Boden being introduced by Norman Bacrac

She has two children and two grandchildren.

6 Ethical Record, September, 2003 HOW JOHN RUSKIN CHANGED ' S LIFE Cynthia J. Gamble Lecture to the South Place Ethical Society 16 February 2003 The lecture was illustrated with 26 slides

This is an amazing story of how Marcel Proust (1871-1922) became spellbound by John Ruskin (1819-1900), a man 52 years older, living in a foreign country and speaking a foreign language that Proust did not understand. Proust described himself as being "intoxicated- by Ruskin, so compelling was the force, and Marie Nordlinger, the English silversmith and craftswoman, remarked that "only Ruskin mattered". It is the story of Proust's extraordinary relationship with the English writer he never met. Proust never went to : the nearest he got was within sight of Guernsey when yachting in 1904, but did not even disembark.

When Ruskin died, aged 80, on 20 , Proust was only 28 years old. He had published a book of short stories Les plaisirs et krs fours [Pleasures and Days] in 1896, preceded by a few short articles with limited circulation, and had acquired a reputation of being a dilettante. There is no evidence that Ruskin knew of Proust's existence, let alone any of his writing: we can safely say that Ruskin died without knowing anything about Proust. Yet it was Ruskin' s very death that inspired Proust to get to know him more closely through reading and translating and goaded him to work.

Ruskin was an only child - his father, John James, was a prosperous sherry merchant - over-protected and spoilt, with doting, cloying parents, who remained reluctant to recognise the independence of their only child. Proust had a younger brother Robert, who became a doctor. The father, Adrien Proust, born in the small town of Illiers, to a catholic family, became a prestigious specialist in Health and Hygiene at the Faculty of Medicine in Paris. The mother, Jeanne Weil, came from a wealthy family of Jewish stockbrokers and bankers. Prone to attacks of asthma of increasing severity, Proust became dependent upon his mother and she upon him, and they formed an unusually close relationship which excluded the preSence of another woman.

Proust's life spanned a period of great upheaval and tension in : the Third Republic, the so-called Belle Epoque, World War 1, the Dreyfus Affair, tensions between Catholics and Jews, rising anti-clericalism culminating in the separation of the Church and State in 1905, much of which is incorporated into his monumental novel A la recherche du temps perdu ( ). Ruskin was the towering figure in mainly Protestant England, and during most of his life Queen Victoria was on the throne. He witnessed the industrialisation of Britain, and the development of railways, of which he was critical, for although they enabled people to access areas of natural beauty, such as the or the , Ruskin was concerned about the potential damage to the environment caused by mass tourism. Hc was a dominant and influential whose views could make or break an artist or writer. "His judgments ranged over the whole surface of human existence," declared the obituary writer in The Times of 22 January 1900.

Adrien Proust was particularly concerned that his son did not seem predisposed to a career. Proust was unable to sustain a regular job and never took up the post of assistant librarian in the Mazarine Library in Paris that had been obtained for him. His diurnal and nocturnal rhythms were becoming more and more irregular and his lifestyle was not conducive to a temporal structure imposed upon him by society. He was beginning to rise later and later in the day, and to adopt a preference for writing and

Ethical Record, September; 2003 7 working at night. This routine was so diametrically opposed to that of other members of his family that he was often obliged to communicate with them by letter.

Adrien Proust and John James Ruskin both realised that their sons had little or no business sense. John James Ruskin bemoaned his son' s lack of business acumen and lack of interest in "the City" in a letter to W. I-I. I-larrison of 30 January 1837, writing that John knew "the shape of every needle round Mont Blanc, and could not tell you now where Threadneedle Street is". Adrien and Jeanne Proust gave their son pocket money during their whole lives and on his mother's death, Marcel inherited a sizeable sum of money (his half-share calculated in today's terms would be around DmiIlion). Similarly, John James Ruskin generously financed his son's projects - long and expensive holidays abroad with servants and helpers, accommodation, the purchase of paintings and bequeathed to John Ruskin a considerable fortune.

"Ruskin Gave Us Eyes To See" Autumn 1899, however, marked a turning point in Proust's life. After spending several weeks in the fashionable spa town of Evian-les-Bains, on the south side of Lake Geneva, he wrote to his mother asking her to send him, urgently, Robert de La Sizerannes Ruskin et la religion de la /maitre; first published in 1897, because he wanted "to see the mountains through the eyes of that great man Illuskinj". Proust was in a part of France that was dear to Ruskin, among the majestic Alps, that he had sketched and written about extensively in , (vol 4), and in Deucalion. In l?uskin et hi religion de la beattli:, there are many extracts from Ruskin's works, brilliantly translated into French by La Sizeranne and accompanied by sensitive commentaries. One of these passages was Ruskin's recollection of his first sight of the Alps from in Northern , in 1833. In his autobiographical work Praeterita. Ruskin recalled with intense emotion this experience:

"suddenly- behold- beyond! There was no thought in any of us for a moment of their being clouds. They were as clear as crystal, sharp on the pure horizon sky, and already tinged with rose by the sinking sun. LI with so much of science mixed with feeling as to make the sight of the Alps not only the revelation of the beauty of the earth, but the opening of the first page of its volume, I went down that evening from the garden-terrace of Schaffhausen with my destiny fixed in all of it that was to be sacred and useful."

Ruskin was obsessed with teaching people to see: "To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion, - all in one" he wrote in Modern Painters (vol 3). This was accompanied by his belief that "the greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see." His teaching included: seeing the Alps both as a huge massif and a tiny fragment of an aiguille, seeing a Carpaccio painting, seeing a leaf, a kingfisher, Venetian , a piece of quartz, a snake, moonlight, a cyclamen in , an ivy leaf, or the white oxalis on rough terrain in the Jura "oxalis, troop by troop, like virginal processions of the Mois de Marie, the dark vertical clefts in the limestone choked up with them as with heavy snow, and touched with ivy on the edge." Charlotte Bronte, after readingModern Painters, told her publisher: "Hitherto I have only had instinct to guide me in judging of art: I feel now as if I had been walking blindfold - this book seems to give me eyes." La Sizeranne responded similarly: "Ruskin gave us eyes to see."

When Proust thought, mistakenly, that his own death was imminent, his overwhelming desire was not only to see Venice through Ruskin's eyes but to touch its stones and feel 8 Ethical Record, Septeinbet; 2003 as close to the city and to Ruskin as possible. In his preface to La dAmiens he opened his heart about his very first visit to Venice in late April 1900: "at a time when I believed my days to be numbered, [ I left for Venice in order to be able before dying to approach, touch, and see incarnated in decaying but still-erect and rosy palaces, Ruskin's ideas on domestic architecture of the Middle Ages." "I went to Venice because of Ruskin", he wrote in a letter to the Princesse de Caraman-Chimay, in 1903, three years later.

Venice Central To In Search Of Lost Time That Venitian stay, with his mother and two friends, was a busy and productive one for Proust. He sought out the Palazzo Contarini Fasan on the Grand Canal that Ruskin had sketched in 1841 and had described as the richest work of the fifteenth-century domestic Gothic in Venice, but notable more for riches than excellence of design. In one respect, however, it deserves to be regarded with attention, as showing how much beauty and dignity may be bestowed on a very small and unimportant dwelling-house by Gothic sculpture. [...] The Traceried Parapet is chiefly used in the Gothic of the North. LI It is, when well designed, the richest and most beautiful of all forms, and many of the best buildings of France and are dependent for half their effect upon it.

Proust was enchanted by its "delightful, sculpted lace" and incorporated it into In Search of Lost Time.

He found Carpaccio's paintings, particularly those that Ruskin, whom he regarded as the "discoverer, eulogist and devotee" of Carpaccio, described. Ruskin wrote extensively about the St Ursula cycle - Martyrdom and Death of St Ursula - and projected onto Ursula the attributes of Rose LaTouche in an obsessive way. Proust's personal interest in the same painting was in "the old woman" whom he identified with his mother.

"As often as not we would set off for St Mark's [...]. My mother and I would enter the baptistery, treading underfoot the marble and glass mosaics of the paving, in front of us the wide arcades whose curved pink surfaces have been slightly warped by time [ . . . [ . Seeing that I needed to spend some time in front of the mosaics representing the Baptism of Christ, and feeling the icy coolness that pervaded the baptistery, my mother threw a shawl over my shoulders. [...] A time has now come when, remembering the baptistery of St Mark's - contemplating the waters of the Jordan in which St John immerses Christ, while the gondola awaited us at the landing- stage of the Piazzetta - it is no longer a matter of indifference to me that, beside me in that cool penumbra, there should have been a woman draped in her mourning with the respectful and enthusiastic fervour of the old woman in Carpaccio's Martyrdom and Death of St Ursula in the Accademia, and that that woman, with her red cheeks and sad eyes and in her black veils [ . . ] should be my mother." Proust links the memory of being with his mother in the Baptistery of St Mark's (and memories of the mosaics, particularly The Baptism of Christ), with Carpaccio's painting. St Mark's is also associated with reading Ruskin's St Mark's Rest with Marie Nordlinger and with the translation of passages from The Bible of . For soon after Proust's precipitous return from Evian in 1899, he commenced the translation of The Bible of Amiens, published in 1904 as La Bible d'Amiens.

Venice is central to In Search of Lost Time. The Narrator longs to visit that city,

Ethical Record, September, 2003 9 the "School of , the home of , the most complete museum of the domestic architecture of the Middle Ages" (he uses a montage of quotations from Ruskin's works), and to see Carpaccio's paintings. After some disappointments, he eventually goes there with his mother. Proust transposes many of his own memories of his real visit into the novel.

Padua Proust also went to Padua, in the steps of Ruskin, to see the frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel. Among the Virtues and Vices, Ruskin had drawn attention to Carita / Charity, described in The Stones of Venice as

having a circular glory round her head, and a cross of fire; she is crowned with flowers, presents with her right hand a vase of corn and fruit, and with her left receives treasure from Christ, who appears above her, to provide her with the means of continual offices of beneficence, while she tramples underfoot the treasures of the earth:

Later, Ruskin amended this interpretation: "I doubt not I read the action wrong; she is giving her heart to God while she gives gifts to men." In Proust's novel, the pregnant kitchen girl is cruelly likened to Giotto's Charity:

it seems impossible that any thought of charity can ever have found expression in her vulgar and energetic face. By a fine stroke of the painter' s invention she is trampling all the treasures of the earth beneath her feet, but exactly as if she were treading grapes in a wine-press to extract their juice, or rather as if she had climbed on to a heap of sacks to raise herself higher; and she is holding out her flaming heart to God, or shall we say 'handing' it to him, exactly as a cook might hand up a corkscrew through the skylight of her basement kitchen to someone who has called down for it from the ground-floor window.

The impact of Proust's own visit to Padua is captured in In Search of Lost Time:

"After walking across the garden of the Arena in the glare of the sun, I entered the Giotto chapel, the entire ceiling of which and the background of the frescoes are so blue that it seems as though the radiant daylight has crossed the threshold with the human visitor in order to give its pure sky a momentary breather in the coolness and shade [ . . .] . This sky transplanted on to the blue-washed stone was peopled with flying angels which I was seeing for the first time LI. Watching the flight of these angels, I had the same impression of actual movement, literally real activity, that the gestures of Charity and Envy had given me,"

Amiens and Rouen Although Proust's only documented visit to Amiens was in September 1901, his obituary articles imply that he made a pilgrimage in 1900 to see the cathedral through Ruskin's eyes.

The impact of Ruskin' s death was to bring Proust closer to "that great man". He expressed his emotions to Marie Nordlinger, his sadness coupled with consolation: "For I realise how insignificant death is when 1 see how mightily that dead man is alive, how much 1 admire him, listen to him, strive to understand him and obey him more than many who are living." Interweaving Ruskin's own comments on the death of Turner, Proust wrote: "Dead, he continues to enlighten us, like those dead stars whose light reaches us still, and one may say of him what he said on the occasion of Turner's 10 Ethical Record, September, 2003 death, 'Through those eyes, now filled with dust, generations yet unborn will learn to behold the light of nature'."

Proust felt compelled to go to the Normandy town of Rouen to find the little couchant figure on the Booksellers' Door that Ruskin had described and sketched in The Seven Lamps of Architecture: "I went to Rouen, as if obeying a dying wish, and as if Ruskin, upon dying, had in some way entrusted to his readers the poor creature to which he had given life again by speaking of it, and-which, unknowingly, had just lost forever the person who had done for it as much as its first sculptor.- This little figurine is the manifestation of a discovery that Proust makes: -nothing therefore dies that has survived, no more the sculptor' s thought than Ruskin' s thought".

"Work While You Have Light" "Work while you have light" was the key message in Ruskin's preface to the 1871 edition of Sesame and Lilies. This was the very message that Proust sent to Georges de Lauris, urging him to keep it in mind at all times. Ruskin taught Proust how to work and how to see, and Proust was a willing student: "I had said to myself, in my enthusiasm for Ruskin: He will teach me, for he too, in some portion at least, is he not the truth? He will make my spirit enter where it had no access, for he is the door. He will purify me, for his inspiration is like the lily of the. valley. He will intoxicate me and will give me life, for he is the vine and the life."

It was not simply for pleasure that he went to Venice, Amiens and Rouen, hut to acquire, from Ruskin, some "priceless benefit" run profit inestimableTh Learning at the feet of his mentor was accompanied by a period of "voluntary servitude-, one of the necessary stages in the process of being an independent writer. "This voluntary servitude is the beginning of freedom," declared Proust. It manifested itself not only in visits to places dear to Ruskin and to works of art, but also in the long, often tedious task of translating The Bible of Amiens and Sesame and Lilies.

Ruskin sustained Proust through the deaths of his parents (in 1903 and 1905), deaths of many close friends, and during the horrors of the Great War when he was confined to Paris. Ruskin's writings gave him the strength and courage to work and "complete- his novel for which he sacrificed his life, in a cold, rented Paris apartment, on 18 November 1922 at the age of 51. Further Reading John Batchelor, John Ruskin: No Wealth hat Life, Pimlico, 2000 William C. Carter, Marcel Proust: A Life, Yale University Press, 2000 Cynthia J. Gamble, Proust as Interpreter of Ruskin: The Seven Lamps of Translation, Birmingham, Alabama, Summa Publications, 2002. ISBN 1-883478-36-3 GALHA Friday 10 October 2003, 7.30pm Conway Hall Pedro Almodovar Our speaker José Arrova argues that Almodavar's cinema is very camp and queer, and was fundamental in altering post-Franco perceptions of Spanish national identity both at home and abroad. José-Arrova, a lecturer in the Department of Film and Television Studies at the University of Warwick, is the editor of Action/Spectacle Cinema: A Sight and Sound Reader and has written on Spanish and Canadian cinema.

Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association. www.galha.org

Ethical Record, September, 2003 11 GEORGE HERBERT PERRIS 1866-1920 A CASE STUDY OF AN ETHICIST AND A RADICAL Robert Gomme Lecture to the Ethical Society 8 June 2003.

It is an honour to be invited to lecture here in Conway Hall, not only because of the distinction that the invitation confers in itself - I follow a long line of distinguished speakers - but also because the subject of my lecture, Herbert Perris, lectured in this halFs forbear, South Place in Finsbury. Moreover Perris lodged nearby in University Hall, now Dr. Williams's Library, in Gordon Square when he first came to London from Hull in 1888 at the age of twenty-two. It is an arca with a fine intellectual history dating from at least a generation before the Bloomsbury Group made it famous and the young Perris seems to have niade the most of his surroundings.

Until it moved to Oxford in 1888 University Hall had been the home of New College, the Unitarian training establishment, and shared its accommodation with dissenting students attending University College nearby. But it remained a centre for metropolitan Unitarianism. In Bedford Place, off Russell Square, the former Anglican clergyman, Stopford Brooke, who left the church because of his publicly acknowledged disbelief in miracles, retained a faithful congregation. Philip Wicksteed, the Unitarian minister at Little Portland Street Chapel, became the first Warden of University Hall in 1890. He had scandalised the justly famous Unitarian preacher James Martineau with his sermons containing a mixture of Dantean theology, Henry Georgeite economics and strong support for Ibsen. Mrs Humphry Ward, social reformer as well as best selling novelist, lived in Russell Square. In 1888 she published her famous novel, Robert Elsmere, about loss of faith redeemed by social service, which sold a million copies by 1900. The first London Positivist centre was in 19 Chapel Street, off Lamb's Conduit Street, and Professor Beesley, the co-translator of Comte's System of Positive Polity, was at University College itself During Perris's stay in Gordon Square from mid-1888 till his marriage in July 1891 Perris came to know all the people I have just mentioned and many others of equal standing and was much involved in this stimulating, lively and campaigning environment.

The Social And Political Situation The period before, during and immediately after World War 1 continues to fascinate us as frequent books, radio, TV programmes and films testify. This is not surprising as the period qualifies in many ways as the seedbed of much 20th and 2Ist century history. In Britain, as I hope to show, many of the ideas about how modern society should conduct itself, came to the fore at that time - the state, citizenship rights, constitutional reform, the provision of state , and the abolition of war as a means of dealing with international disputes, to name but a few.

Since the Napoleonic Wars, which ended in 1815, there had been few wars between European states and they were brief. The outbreak of in 1914 therefore came as a profound shock. Since 1871 there had been no war in Europe at all save for the two local Balkan wars of 1912-13. The war lasted over four years and destroyed many illusions of progress as the world experienced the horror of industrial, scientific and technological advance applied to the waging of war. As we arc acutely aware, its impact continues to this day - the destruction of the pre-war continental empires and the Ottoman Empire, for example, led to a re- of the political maps of Europe and the Middle East. But the new boundaries have often proved fragile and have led to international tensions and misery for their inhabitants.

Ethical Record, SeptembeL 2003 Peace, then, before 1914, was the norm and the growth in international trade, international law and international institutions seemed to underpin it. During the 19th century real advancement was made as industrialisation created increased wealth and standards of living. But much wealth was distributed unequally and there remained appaling disparities in living conditions. Land ownership was often grotesquely skewed. In Britain there was a widespread belief among radical thinkers that the potential for a more just world existed through the spread of education and , a more equitable distribution of wealth and a more collective approach to problems both within and between countries. New organisations were formed to promote progress. The Fabian Society and the Marxist Social Democratic Foundation were founded in 1884, and the Labour Party soon after. New Liberalism (nowdays known as the Third Way, or a way to pursue radical reform without the encumbrance of stultifying theories or doctrines) revivified the old Liberal party. From Harcourt's introduction of death duties when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer in Gladstone's last administration (1892-94) to the great reforming programmes of Liberal governments from 1906 the way was prepared for the later creation of what we now call the .

We see the period therefore as one not only of political change but also as one of change, in social, economic, scientific and cultural fields. But the positive thinking mentioned earlier was offset - I am still referring to Britain - by a growing introspection and self consciousness: angst was in the air: people looked back on the mid-19th century as one of relative certainties. It was not accidental, for example, in a changing world that conservation should emerge as a political issue. The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings was founded in 1877, the Footpaths Preservation Society in 1884, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in 1889 and the in 1895.

In Britain there were also widespread fears of foreign competition which a glorification of imperialism, exemplified by the Diamond Jubilee of 1897, did little to allay. And the unease was heightened when, to widespread international and national criticism, it took 3 years to defeat an army of peasant farmers in South Africa in what became known as the Boer War 1899-1902.

Perris A Typical Victorian The life of George Herbert Perris, the subject of my recently published biography*, who lived from 1866 to 1920, neatly embraces the period I have been trying to sketch. He provides us with a case study of how one person saw current affairs and tried to do something to advance the matters in which he believed. He was a remarkable individual. In many ways he was a typical Victorian in that he always sought to improve the shining hour. His energy seems limitless: if he had bothered to put a recreation in his Who's Who entry it might have been "change of work", but imbued with a sense of high moral purpose, he saw all his work as directed to a public end. A recent commentator describes such individuals as "public moralists-, that is, I quote, "those who tried to persuade their contemporaries to live up to their professed ideals... invoked a strenuous ethic and gave such moral considerations priority over other concerns".

Perris was the son of a Unitarian minister. As for many movers and shakers of the time non-conformity and the manse provided a launching pad. They were poor and knew they had to make their own way but they were comparatively well educated and, as mentioned, imbued with ideals. Perris left school at 14, was apprenticed to a pharmacist in Norwich, but gave it up at 16 and began a career in journalism in Hull Ethical Record, Septenzbez; 2003 13 with the Hull Express, the town's evening newspaper, of which he became editor at 19. Three years later in 1888, as mentioned, he moved to London and lived there for the rest of his life. In 1890 he joined a new weekly Liberal journal, The Speaker, (later named The Nation, and later still, the New Statesman and Nation). He immediately took up Radical politics and moved in a number of overlapping Radical circles.

Perris Adopts Ethicism He was an early member of the and the principles of this movement were to play an important role in Perris's thought and motivation. As one historian of the period has pointed out, Ethicism "became a major breeding ground of progressive Liberalism and served as a fusion point of liberal, idealist, evolutionary and moderate socialist thought and re-directed the traditional liberal concern with morals and justice". If traditional Christian religious belief was to be modified or disavowed, then the moral values that guided society would need to demonstrate the basis on which they were formed. This task Ethicism tried to fulfil. The movement included some famous names including the Cambridge Henry Sidgwick, the politician and later first Labour Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, and the economist J.A. Hobson, author of the influential book Imperialism.

Perris seems soon to have abandoned Unitarianism when he came to London. His upbringing had demonstrated that religious belief and practical action to help those less fortunate members of society went hand in hand; by this time he was clearly ready for political activity that would, he hoped, lead to a change in the way society organised itself. If the basis of his religious belief was weakening, then the Ethical Movement with its emphasis on morality and action without belief in a supernatural being offered a spiritual and political home. Hobson, who became a close associate of Perris, also came to London late in the 1880s and seems to have undergone a similar change in outlook. In a passage in his autobiography that might well have come from Perris's pen he wrote:

Though I had never become a full blooded rationalist in the sense of holding that reasoning was the sole method of attaining truth and of assessing values, my mind had long been set in that direction, and when I came to London I soon found myself consorting with persons who had shed theology and who sought to apply rationalism in the fields of ethics and politics.

The first Ethical Society to be founded in Britain, the London Ethical Society, began life in 1886 with the announcement of a course of lectures in the winter of 1886- 7; communications were to be addressed to Professor J .H. Muirhead at University Hall. Stanton Coit, an American who led the spread of Ethicism in Britain, had first visited London in 1885 and made a number of contacts. He returned in 1887 and became minister at South Place Chapel. South Place was a noted home for dissenters, having been Baptist, then Unitarian early in the nineteenth century but led by Moncure Conway (after whom, of course, this Hall is named) had later moved towards a loose form of . Coil was a dynamic individual who attracted much attention; soon South Place adopted Ethicism and the movement spread. By 1901 there were some forty-two Ethical Societies in existence. In 1894 South Place, after protracted drafting and ideological debate, was able to define its objects as "the cultivation of a rational religious sentiment, the study of ethical principles and the promotion of human welfare in harmony with advancing knowledge". Hobson lectured at South Place for thirty-six years. He wrote in his autobiography:

Addressing audiences consisting for the most part of men and women of the 14 Ethical Record, September, 2003 business and professional classes, with a scattering of educated clerks and manual workers, I found myself driven to put ethical significance into a variety of current topics and events, many of which belonged to the field of politics and economics.

Other Ethicists who regularly spoke included Perris, J. M. Robertson, Ramsay MacDonald, and Murray Macdonald, a well-known Liberal MP . In the autumn of 1900, for example. Perris gave a course of eight weekly lectures at South Place on Tuesday evenings under the title "Empire, or Democracy" .

Perris On "Those Predatory Classes" Much of the material in these lectures appeared in Perris's contribution to a collection of essays published in 1900 under the title Ethical Democracy: Essays in Social Dynamics edited by Stanton Coit. Other contributors included Professor D.G. Ritchie, the Idealist philosopher, who wrote on "Evolution and Democracy", Ramsay MacDonald on "The People in Power". Hobson on "The Ethics of Industrialism", and Professor Muirhead on "The Family". Perris's essay, "The New Internationalism-, began by justifying an inquiry into the right relations between states, mainly because modern imperialism had corrupted judgements ("the successors of Gladstone lauding the battle of Omdurman", as he put it). Ile asserted what, by the late 1890s, had become accepted opinion among Radicals and non-Imperialist Liberals, namely that "the facts and principles of external policy have of late so profoundly affected internal affairs that it is impossible to separate the two aspects, for instance, of government, or of military establishments or of the economics of trade-. But an educated democracy, grown more aware of the wider world through the growth of international trade and travel, increasing international links, the spread of education and co-operation among like- minded groups within nations would eventually lead to an international society based on mutual respect among nations.

"The worst foes of true patriotism", he wrote, "are those predatory classes, plutocratic, militarist, aristocratic which use the word to mask their own cosmopolitan greed and violence. The nation will find its lost soul in a process of international democratic expansion, as the parish council has found itself again in the course of the latest expansion of British local government, and as the individual realises himself in the friendly give and take of settled social life."

When Perris wrote that article, which is still referred to by modern commentators, his pen had already been active in the cause of Ethicism for two years in the Ethical World, whose first issue appeared on I January 1898. Edited by Stanton Coit, it was a weekly journal of news and comment priced at one penny. In the issues of its first few years there seems scarcely a subject of concern to Radicals that it did not cover; Ethicism, as mentioned, saw itself as a pervasive and comprehensive doctrine. For Ethicists the world presented, I quote, "the failure of existing economic and political conditions to secure for all classes of society alike reasonable opportunities for a full human life-. There was also a home for comments on selected foreign countries, particularly for thc militaristic aspects of Germany and the excesses of Tsarism in Russia and, it scarcely needs saying, the evils of Imperialism.

For the first two years Perris contributed a signed "middle article" of some seventeen hundred words in almost every issue. Perris's first piece was on news of a decline in the birth rate in France. which he welcomed so that populations could stabilise. In succeeding weeks Zola's challenge to the French Establishment over Dreyfus occupied him on a number of occasions; and on three consecutive weeks he Ethical Record, September, 2003 15 took Tolstoy, one of his heroes, to task for suggesting that art should be chiefly a moral instrument, "a means of union among men" with no acceptance of pleasure. Later he commended him in "Non Resistance as a Method of Revolt". He was often to display a sharp turn of phrase as in "Citizenship and the Board School Machine- when he said, in urging the teaching of civics, that the system wants "children to be good Trinitarians, good Quakers, good Unitarians mayhap; but chiefly good, obedient, contented miners, dockers, clerks and what not". He could be savage too. In a piece entitled " Apathy", he excoriated popular newspapers as:

... the kinetoscope of a palace of varieties in which millions waste their leisure hours. With its help the whole world becomes our Colosseum. Endless processions of captives, with spoil from every clime, pass before us, till our eyes are dazzled and our brain intoxicated with the reflection of our own power and glory. The effects of this debauch, long continued, range from a mental and moral indigestion up to that ferocity which hails the slaughter of ten thousand men with shrieks of joy, and compels even its priests to chant praises because 'Gordon is avenged'.

(This refers, of course, to the war in the Sudan and the British victory at Omdurman)

"Is War Inevitable?" a piece on the Spanish/American war, drew him to say:

...the moral reformer must always be ready to meet the challenge: what's to be done? Only when the advocate of peace has realised in detail how many ways of escape from international conflict are offered by a persistently courageous intelligence, will he be able to convert the peoples to his own faith that war is never inevitable.

Perris: "England's Broken Workers" In March 1899 he wrote four weekly articles under the general heading of "The Weak". Inequalities in health and health care, the plight of children of poor parents, the exploitation of women in industry and in domestic service and the poor elderly in the workhouse all got extended discussion, the latter ending in a characteristic peroration:

As I walk to the railway station to go to work they peer at me over the fences and through the gates...these blind faces of England's broken workers, now safely caged and habited in the official print and corduroy that robs them of the last trace of individuality, and marks them off as useless remnants, the forgotten orphans of a heartless society. Just below in the valley lies the church where the Christian gospel is preached very frequently, and the vicarage with its fat kitchen garden and orchard; and across the road are the golf links, of which there is a fine view from the workhouse windows. It must be a great consolation to the old folk...on the one side of their prison, to watch the industrious idlers of I3ritish sport and on the other, to reflect upon the practical outcome of Christianity at the end of the nineteenth century.

The pages of the Ethical World reveal other aspects of Perris's thinking. In June I S98 he wrote on "The Unitarian Dilemma" to give advice to Unitarians in an internal controversy about the extent to which they should centralise their movement. It is clear that he was writing as an affectionate outsider, an interested observer, and no longer a participating, albeit a questioning, member.

16 Ethical Record, September, 2003 In an article, "Queen Empress to King Emperor", written to commemorate the death of Queen Victoria, Perris displays his republicanism. From its high point early in the 1870s the republican movement in the UK had declined but there had been continuous press and parliamentary criticism of the cost of the royal family and of the lifestyle of the Prince of throughout the 1880s and 1890s. However even this had become muted by the time of Edward VIPs accession. Perris began his article by tracing the rise and then decline of republicanism during the nineteenth century when by the time of Victoria's death "Disraeli's Oriental extravagances had become the commonplaces of daily life". Yet the trend of history was against the institution: how could a hereditary principle be sustained in a democracy?

The death of T.B. Potter, Cobden's successor as MP for Rochdale, the last surviving member of the Cobden circle and a founder of the Cobden Club, gave Perris the opportunity in November 1898 to meditate on Cobden's legacy of Free Trade (a precursor to the comments on Cobdenism in Ethical Democracy mentioned above). Perris never gave up his belief in Cobden's intellectual legacy and was to become secretary of the Cobden Club in 1903, when the Protectionist debates of the time generated renewed activity in defence of Free Trade. In 1898, however, Perris lamented that the hopes of the founders of the Free Trade movement fifty years earlier had not been realised. "The best of the Manchester men were so busy with the corn and cotton argument", he wrote, "that they never had time to study other domestic implications of the same fundamental idea. . . they dreamed no dreams of social synthesis and international brotherhood". "In particular", he continued, "the Club has been concerned at the growth of protectionism in foreign countries, ... the continuance of poverty at home, ... and the intensification of national jealousies" which found expression in the "continuance of war, the unceasing growth in armaments and the solidification of military monarchies". He offered no panacea; the web of concord, based on contacts at all levels of society , that lies at the heart of relations between peoples is "...the Ethic of Free Trade which it remains for us to realise".

The New Ethical Societies On 28 May 1898 the Ethical World carried an unsigned item about the formation of The Society of Ethical Propagandists. "Until this year", it said, "there was only one permanent and regular 'Ethical lecturer' Ithat is Stanton Con] and during nine years there was no evidence that this new profession would attract men sufficiently to induce them to identify themselves publicly with it and to find in it their life career ... eleven men have determined to devote themselves systematically to the spread of the ideas and to the organisation of the Ethical Movement, giving it as much of their time and energy as their other duties will allow". Perris, Hobson, Robertson, and Ramsay MacDonald were among the eleven names, all of whom undertook to spread the word by lectures, writing and helping to organise new Ethical Societies. The issue of 25 June returned to the subject and speaking ex cathedra, if I may be permitted to use such a term in this context, set out the principles of Ethicism to be propagated, as they were perceived at that moment. "Ethical Societies are founded upon a conviction that a good life is desirable for its own sake, and rests upon no supernatural sanction. The organic nature of human society implies that a good individual life can only be attained in a good society".

An organisation that had close links with Ethicism was the Rainbow Circle called after the Rainbow Tavern in Fleet Street where its early meetings were held. Founded in 1894, it grew out of a growing dissatisfaction with Liberal party policy early in the 1890s, which, many Liberals felt, was failing to address the challenges to society posed by the manifestations of late 19th century . The aim of the Ethical Record, September 2003 17 Circle was "to provide a rational and comprehensive view of political and social progress, leading to a consistent body of political and economic doctrine which could ultimately he formulated in a programme for action and in that form provide a rallying point for social reformers". The similarities with Ethicism's aims are obvious and many prominent Ethicists were active members, including Perris. As noted many Radical bodies of the period had overlapping memberships with the same names cropping up. In the case of the Rainbow Circle, membership included names from the Fabian Society, the Social Democratic Foundation, the University , the Peace Movement, aspiring young Liberals, the Society for Friends of Russian Freedom and Ethicists. Meetings were held monthly and themes were pursued for a whole season. Thus subjects such as workings of democracy, health and welfare, colonies and the empire were considered in depth. Many members went on to distinguished political careers such as Ramsay MacDonald, Herbert Samuel, Charles Trevelyan and Sydney Olivier. Perris played a prominent role and led discussions on 11 occasions between 1895 and 1914, this number being exceeded only by three others.

Permanent peace and harmony between nations has long been an ideal, desired by most of mankind. And the active pursuit of international peace sits well with Ethicism for it brought a moral dimension to the consideration of international affairs; indeed foreign policy should be driven by a moral imperative. Perris' s most prominent cause was the Peace Movement. The modern Peace movement grew up in the immediate aftermath of the Napoleonic wars and there were soon organisations in many western European countries. In Britain the early years were dominated by Quaker influence but by the 1830s this influence was felt to be insufficiently active and proselytising and the organisation moved away from its strict Quaker origins. The advent late in the 1840s of Richard Cobden, the great free trader and the companion of John Bright in their famous anti-Corn Laws campaign, was decisive. He was the l3ritish Peace movements first powerful political figure. The simple Quaker message, he said, was insufficient. It was he who argued that wars of self-defence were acceptable, and he also accepted that war in defence of a weaker neighbour might also he necessary. And, pursuing the defensive line of argument, agreed that a fleet was necessary to protect British foreign trade and safeguard food imports. There was thus no single philosophic position of the Peace movement. Problems arose, for example, over attitudes to wars of national independence or liberation. Did one support Garibaldi, for example, in his struggle for Italian unification? Turkey generated particular problems. The Bulgarian massacres of the 1870s and the Armenian massacres of the 1890s being cases in point. The events of 1914 illustrate the division. Sonie such as Perris gave the war principled support: others opposed it for equally principled reasons, and such disagreements often ruptured long-standing friendships. Perris A Pacificist, Not A Pacifist Modern commentators distinguish between - non-violence - and Pacificism, a peaceful approach to international affairs and other countries but which accepts defensive war, and what we would call humanitarian intervention, as in Kosovo, in the last resort. Perris was not a Pacifist in the strict sense but a Pacificist. As a strong internationalist the prevention of war was his highest political priority, but this did not exclude the use of force in the last resort. He even at times seemed to go beyond that position when for example he was so moved by the massacres of the Armenians by the Turks in the 1890s that he advocated sending the fleet to capture Smyrna so strangling Turkey' s trade.

In Perris's time there were two main organisations in the Peace movement, in addition to the Peace Society, and it was to one of these, the International Peace and Arbitration Association, that he devoted much of his time. It was a secular organisation, 18 Ethical Record, Septentbet; 2003 it appealed mainly to middle class intellectuals and was passionately propagandist. Perris edited its monthly journal, Concord, from 1893 to 1906, served on its committees, engaged fully with its propagandising, and through it became a founding member of the National Peace Council from its beginnings in 1904. He also was deeply involved in the international Peace Movement and regularly attended international conferences of Peace organisations. On the one hand he campaigned for the creation and strengthening of institutions to serve peace, such as arrangements for international arbitration and the spread of democratic government ( do not fight one another) and on the other against imperialism and the arms trade. The Association's prime aim was to seek a formula for settling disputes between countries by international arbitration. But its doctrines also included non-intervention in the internal affairs of other countries, a system to bring about international disarmament, the development of an international code of law, anti-colonialism and educating the public.

In 1896 Perris formed the Increased Armaments Protest Committee to oppose the increased expenditure on the navy that marked those years. A vigorous supporter of the First Hague Peace Conference in 1399, for which he campaigned, Perris saw the conference as a success. For the first time national governments engaged in a debate about international peace, established an international court and so took the first faltering steps to what later became the League of Nations and its successor, the United Nations,

From 1906, when the Liberal party won a huge victory in the general election of that year, he was a prominent critic of the Liberal government's foreign policy and re- armament plans. In 1908 he resigned from the party and joined the Labour Party in protest over issues arising from the Anglo-Russian Convention. However his chief ire was directed at what he saw as the Liberal government's anti-German stance - the Anglo-French entente of 1904, followed by the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907 meant that Germany would see itself as threatened from all sides. In an attempt to offer comfort to the Germans he took a prominent role in fostering friendship with Germany through such bodies as the Anglo-German Friendship Society, of which he was Joint Secretary on its foundation in 1905 in the aftermath of the Moroccan crisis of that year.

Perris's Visits To Russia As mentioned, it was axiomatic among those in the Peace movement that democracies do not fight one another. Second only to his work for war prevention was Perris's work for the creation of a democratic Russia. Russia was the bogeyman for many Radicals. A great people were brutally governed and only democracy could release their creative energies. The number of Russian political refugees in England testified to the repressive nature of the regime. Moreover autocratic Tsarist Russia pursued an imperialistic approach to international affairs and was a constant threat to peace. Perris visited Russia on three occasions, in 1896, in 1904 to visit Tolstoy (of which more later) and again in the summer of 1905 at the time of the Revolution. Perris loved Russia and the Russian people and a number of the political refugees in London became close friends, particularly Sergius Stepniak and Felix Volkhovsky. He named his son Felix as a tribute to Volkhovsky and after his 1896 visit he referred to "this strange people of my half adoption". And after Stepniak's death in 1895 he spoke of the way Stepniak had widened the lives of all who came into contact with him thus, I quote "relieving with a gloss of romantic interest their more immediate and, too often, squalid domestic troubles".

Perris was a founding member of the London based Society of Friends of Russian Freedom. Among English members were names from the Ethical Movement Ethical Record„September, 2003 19 and the Rainbow Circle. Perris wrote regularly for the Society's journal Free Russia and also lectured widely. Thus on 27 September 1893 Perris addressed the Newington Reform Club on "Tyranny and Terror in Russia". Ile became editor of the newly founded Liberal newspaper, The Tribune, in 1906 and through his friendship with David Soskice, its St. Petersburg correspondent, was able to print accurate, comprehensive and up to date information about the turbulent state of affairs in Russia after the 1905 revolution. The Russian ambassador in London called The Tribune his "bete noire". Soskice had been a well-known political refugee in London but went to St. Petersburg with British government protection. He led a colourful life - in 1917, for example, he became a member of Kerensky' s secretariat. He was the father of Frank Soskice, Home Secretary in 's administration from 1964-66.

As just mentioned, Perris visited Tolstoy in 1904 at the great man's house at Yasnaya Polyana. Tolstoy and Tolstoy ism had a pervasive attraction for Perris: so many of Tolstoy's doctrines found resonances in his ethical outlook. He wrote two books : the Grand Mujik, a biography, and The Life and Teaching of Leo Tolstoy, a book of extracts with a commentary, as well as numerous articles and lectures over many years. Perris was, of course, only one of a large number of people in the west who felt his call, some to the extent of changing their lives. A principal part of Tolstoy's attraction was the all-embracing nature of his doctrines, as expressed in numerous writings from late in the 1870s when he adopted "non-resistance to evil" and broke with the church. His views subsequently developed into a total view of society based on a system of individual ethics. Society must be transformed from one based on violence to one based on love. The doctrines provided a rich source for critics of society, who could draw upon different aspects to emphasise particular points of view. For Perris and others in the Peace Movement the impact of the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-8 on Tolstoy's thinking, and his subsequent revulsion from violence was seminal. Perris wrote:

Tolstoyism is moral code as exacting as can be formulated by a sane and practical man, yet simple enough for all to understand. . . Reason and love - these are its two eternal figures... its most striking characteristic is its insistent association of faith and works, precept and practice... the replacement of non- resistance... by moral resistance.

Perris: "The Evil Of Evasion" But it was an unhappy visit and Perris broke with his hero. Ile just could not accept an attitude of total non-violence since he argued that it led to total negation of all social activity. Thus he wrote:

I loathe violence and. . . I agree spiritual activity is the greatest and most powerful force. But I also loathe a passive acquiescence in established evil. A strike against the tyranny of money seems to me closely akin to a strike against militarism... spiritual activity seems to me to be positive condition and to imply social agitation in all its forms... the evil of violence has its antithesis in the no less horrid evil of evasion.

Yet Perris retained a regard and respect for Tolstoy and recognised his greatness. He served on the committee that was established in Britain in 1908 to commemorate Tolstoy's eightieth birthday by sending a memorial to him and establishing a fund to promote cheap translations of his writings. And on Tolstoy's death in November 1910 Perris spoke at a memorial meeting organised by the Union of Ethical Societies in the Ethical church in Bayswater to bury any animus he may have felt on particular 20 Ethical Record, September, 2003 occasions. lie stood back to contemplate this colossus. "His sympathies", Perris said, "were universal and his life work was one long ministry to the needs which are common to east and west, black man and white man".

On the outbreak of war in 1914. Perris joined the Daily Chronicle as its correspondent with the French Armies (he spoke French). He supported the war reluctantly and it caused him great pain and heart searching before he reached his decision. In his view the decisive act was the unprovoked and ferocious aggression by Germany on and France; nations had a right to live in freedom from fear. Accordingly, defeat of the Germans was a prerequisite to a new world order, and he particularly singled out the Kaiser and the Prussian governing class as having gone mad. As already mentioned, he was an early supporter of the idea of the League of Nations.

Perris was appointed Legion d'Honneur by the French in 1918 and a CBE by the British in 1919. Worn out by years of overwork in the war he died of pneumonia contracted while attending a League of Nations meeting in Geneva. In the war he lost a son who, having survived Gallipoli and the Somme, joined the RFC and was killed in a flying accident in July 1918. He also had two daughters. His funeral at Golders Green Crematorium was attended by numerous friends and colleagues rrom all the organisations with which he had been concerned. The Prime Minister, Lloyd George, sent his principal private secretary to represent him.

What are we to make of this man who died still relatively young? In 1911 Perris wrote: "the great task of the 20th century, whether we regard domestic or external, moral or economic, needs, is seen to be the removal of the fear of war, and the burdens of preparation it entails, by the organisation of a settled peace.-

In a political sense he spent a life pursuing lost causes, as have many who thought or think like him. But this is to suppose that history is just about winners or losers. He kept ultimate goals in sight and in so doing strengthened and continues to strengthen the case for democracy.

* Robert Gommes biography of Perris is published by Peter Lang, under the title "George Herbert Perris 1866-1920: The Life and Times of a Radical". It contains an extensive bibliography. 0

VIEWPOINT

The letter below was sent to the Foreign Secretary by SPES member Beatrice Feder.

In my vieW, the UK should withdraw its troops from I3asra. However we cannot just abandon its citizens to criminal gangs and religious hooligans. So, whether the US likes it or not, we should request the UN to send an international force to Basra, in equal numbers to the UK troops already there.

This international force to police Basra and administer it in the interest of its citizens - not in the interest of outside powers. Perhaps you will consider trying the above before more soldiers are killed. Beatrice Feder - London NW6

Ethical Record, Septemben 2003 2 I COLIN McCALL - A LIFELONG FREETHINKER

Colin McCall, who died on June 27, his 84th birthday, was something of a rarity among leading freethinkers in that he had never been on nodding terms with religion. But it was his choice to follow in his freethinking parents' footsteps. They eschewed indoctrination, and their son's inherent good sense enabled him to develop his own code for living without religion. Although an English graduate, Colin was a polymath and could well have graduated in philosophy, history or politics. Between his first contribution to the Freethinker in 1939 and his last in April this year, Colin McCall wrote hundreds of articles and reviews for the paper. In 1957 he joined the editorial board and was the obvious choice to be appointed editor of the (then weekly) Freethinker. He doubled as general secretary of the National Secular Society till 1963 and continued as editor till 1965. His measured and balanced conduct in both roles was exemplary. On leaving the Society's employment, Cohn worked for an architectural journal. Later he wrote in a freelance capacity before becoming deputy editor of Yours, a campaigning magazine published by Help the Aged. In September 1990, Colin was back in the Freethinker with a wise and perceptive article entitled "Old Men Remember". Since then, till his last illness, he wrote book reviews and the Down to Earth column. Colin and June, his wife of 44 years, shared freethought principles and a range of interests. Colin underwent an operation in March and remained in hospital till his death. There was a simple secular ceremony at the West Crematorium on July 4. Bill McIlroy

The Humanist Reference Library at Conway Hall is most grateful to the McCalls for the donation of several hundred books on freethought, philosophy, history, science etc. JJ

SOUTII PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY Reg. Charity No. 251396 Founded in 1793. the Society is a progressive movement whose aims arc:

the study and dissemination of ethical principles based on humanism, the cultivation of a rational and humane way of life, and the advancement of research and education in relevant fields.

We invite to membership those who reject supernatural creeds and are in sympathy with our aims. At Conway Hall thc programme includes Sunday lectures, discussions, evening courses and thc renowned South Place Sunday Concerts of chamber music. The Society maintains a Humanist Reference Library. The Society's journal. Ethical Record, is issued ten times a year. Funerals and Memorial meetings may be arranged. The annual subscription is f118 (E12 if a full-time student, unwaged or over 65).

The views expressed in this Journal are not necessarily those of the Society.

22 Ethical Record, September, 2003 BILL HORSLEY 1924 - 2003

Bill was born in December 1924 in West Bromwich, one of a family of six. Bill was never one to shirk his responsibilities so, despite a scholarship to study art, shining at school and becoming head boy, due to the premature death of his mother at 10 years and his father at 17, upon leaving school he went to work as an electrical apprentice to help support his other siblings.

Bill joined the forces in 1944. Due to his intelligence, in military parlance 'superior', he was siphoned off to become a fighter pilot in the RAF, flying Spitfires and Hurricanes. Bill recalled that stepping into a Hurricane alone for the first time was fairly terrifying when his only previous flying experience was a Tiger Moth trainer. Bill met his wife Kate at the International Friendship League in 1959 at Conway Hall and they were married in Christchurch, Hampstead in 1961. They had two daughters.

Up to his forties Bill had a successful career as a consultant Electronic Engineer for the GEC and then Plessey; then he went into teaching working at Technical College from 1975 to 1988, when he retired. He was a natural teacher and had a great rapport with his students, forever giving less able students extra help.

Bill loved music and was always booking seats at the opera and concert halls but the quartet recitals at Conway Hall were his favourites. Every Sunday would find him serving refreshments at the interval and afterwards talking to the musicians. Ile also helped financially towards the publication of the SPES book 2000 Concerts.

His other major interest was philosophy and he often attended debates at the South Place Ethical Society. Bill loved mulling over moral and religious issues with his fellow members and raising a few eyebrows in the process.

Norman Bacrac writes: Bill was a keen dualist and antimaterialist, believing that modern physics had endorsed his belief that consciousness survived death. He never missed an opportunity to promote that point of view in debates at Conway Hall and letters to the Ethical Record. He donated a copy of The Self and its Brain (Popper and Eccles) to the Library. His good humour and attractive personality will be greatly missed at Conway Hall.

EDITH N. WASHBROOK We have just been told that Mrs Edith Washbrook died peacefully on 3 January 2000 at the age of 98. She had been unwell following a fall three months earlier. Her son John was attending a Conference in Chicago when this happened but she decided not to trouble him. Unfortunately the emergency alarm bell attached was not switched on at the time so she was left unattended for some time, and never really recovered.

Edith Washbrook was determined to see the New Millenium Year at a time when she believed she had outlived almost everyone she knew! The day will come she said when her own obituary will appear in the Ethical Record. Apart from being a Life Member, Edith Washbrook was the Membership Secretary for many years in the 1930s, and at that time her husband was also active in the Society.

Albeit belatedly we have conveyed our condolences and sympathy to the family, which has long - standing connections with the Ethical Society. Marina Ingham. Ethical Record, September, 2003 PROGRAMME OF EVENTS AT THE ETHICAL SOCIETY The Library, Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, Holborn, WC1R 4RL. Tel: 020 7242 8037/8034 Registered Charity No. 251396 Website: www.ethicalsoc.org.uk email: [email protected] No charge unless stated

SEPTEMBER 2003 Sunday 21 ANNUAL REUNION OF THE KINDRED SOCIETIES 1430 Keynote Speaker: Jeremy Corhyn. MP Reports from BEIA, GALIIA. IIIEU. NSS. PL, RR Sonnenberg Soc, T Paine Soc., Refreshments. Entenainment.

Tuesday 23 1900 BOOK LAUNCH - OUT OF TIIIS WORLD: An Examination of modern Physics and Cosmology by Hyman Frankel. Wine.

Sunday 28 1100 IDEALS by EJ. GOULD. performed by Don Liversedge and Peter Vlachos 1430 SPES AGM Members only. OCTOBER nursday 2 1815 to 2015 PER Group/SPES MANAGERIALISM IN EDUCATION:A MACNIURRIAN CRITIQUE Prof. Michael Fielding, Sussex University

Saturday 4 1400 FREETHOUGHT HISTORY RESEARCII GROUP Inaugural Meeting. All interested welcome

Sunday 5 1 WO PERSECUTIONS IN TIIE USA: THEN & NOW: Salem and Back Again? Prnf. Bernard Rosenthal. State Univ. of New York at Binghamton

1500 ETHICAL DILEMMAS: Should tobacco and alcohol be prohibited by law? Yes, says Terry Liddle. Chair: Edmund McArthur

Friday 10 1930 GA LHA: Jose Arrova on the influential Spanish film maker Pedro Almodovar

Sat. 1 1 1900 SOS INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ADDICTION IN TIIE MOVIES: Film & Discussion, Dr Nlorag Wood

Sunday 1 1100 'HIE EFFICACY OF SPIRITUAL VS SECULAR APPROACHES TO RECOVERY FROM ADDICTION. Dr Randolph Atkins, Research Scienrisr

1500 SCIENTIFIC TOPICAL TOPICS. Mike Howgate

Sat. 18 1930 POETRY BOOK LAUNCH Presence, new collection by Dinah Livingstone, (Katabasis). Wine.

Sunday 19 1100 AUTHORITARIANISM. Nigel Barnes 1500 CAN WE COMNIUNICATE WITH THE DEAD? video

Thes 21 1900-2100 SITS Evening Class THE CASE AGAINST CREATIONISM. Peter Hearty. (a)The Age of the Earth - Tues 21 Oct. (h)Evolution - Tues 28 Oct

Sunday 26 1100 FROM PEOPLE'S CONCERTS TO SOUTII PLACE SUNDAY CONCERTS Alan Bartley

SOUTH PLACE SUNDAY CONCERTS IN CONWAY HALL 1830h Tickets if, - free for 8-22yrs

Published hy the South Place Ethical Society, Conway Hall. 25 Red Lion Square, WC1R 4RL Printed by J.G. Bryson (Printer) Ltd. 156-162 I ligh Road, London N2 9AS ISSN 0014 - 1690