Ethical Record The Proceedings of the South Place Ethical Society

Vol. 109 No. 9 £1.50 November/December, 2004

William Kingdon Clifford (1845-1879) Mathematician and Philosopher (See page 15)

THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS: THE MADNESS OF CHARLES AND MARY LAMB Sarah Burton 3 JAZZ AT CONWAY HALL Donald Liversedge 14 WILLIAM K. CLIFFORD: MATHEMATICIAN AND PHILOSOPHER Roy Chisholm IS A BALLADE OF EVOLUTION Grant Allen 26 EDITORIAL - PROFESSOR SAYS ATHEISTS AREARROGANT Norman Bacrac 26 TOWARDS 2100 - IS SOCIALISM THE ANSWER? Stan Parker 26 A SEQUENCE FOR IRAQ Kathleen McPhilemy 28 VIEWPOINTS: Szanto, D. Forsyth, b. Rooum, N. Sinnott 29 BRYAN RONALD WILSON (1926-2004) Jennifer Jeynes 31 ETHICAL SOCIETY EVENTS , 32 SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY Conway Hall Humanist Centre 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL. Tel: 020 7242 8034 Fax: 020 7242 8036 Website: www.ethicalsoe.org.uk email: [email protected] SPES ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING, 21 NOVEMBER 2004

At thc AGM the following were elected to the General Committee for 3 years: Aubrey 13owman, Edmund McArthur, Terry Mullins, Kyvelic Papas; for 1 year: Miranda Perfitt. The other members of the GC currently are: Norman l3acrac, Jean Bayliss, Harold Hillman, Donald Langdown, Donald Liversedge, Steven Norley and John Rayner.

Elected as Holding Trustees (for 1 year) were: Donald Liversedge and Harry Slopes-Roe. The other Holding Trustees currently are: Norman Bacrac, Diane Murray, Malcolm Rees, Gerald Vinten and Barbara Ward.

AGM RESOLUTIONS

Motion 1. Resolved: That SPES publish a revised edition of Barbara Smoker's book Humanism [now out of print - previously published by thc NSS and the BHA]. Motion 3. Resolved: That the GC consider the promotion of a series of well-advertised, quarterly, mid- week lectures engaging top speakers. Thc AGM consented to Motions 2 and 4 being withdrawn by their Proposers. Motion 5. Not passed.

MEETING of the GENERAL COMMITTEE of SPES, 1 DECEMBER 2004

The following Officers, who together form the Executive Committee, were elected at the above meeting:

Chairmanof the GC: Terry Mullins.* Hon. Representativeof the GC: Don Liversedge. Vice Chairman: John Rayner.* Registrar: Edmund McArthur. Editor, Ethical Record: Norman Bacrac *TO be confirmed at the nay GC Subcommittee Membership Finance & Hall: N.Bacrac, Jean Bayliss, D.Langdown, D.Liversedge, E.McArthur, T.Mullins, S.Norley, J.Rayner (Chair), with the Admin. Sec. Marina Ingham and Hall Manager P.Vlachos in attendance. Programme, Library, Editorial & Policy, (PLEP): N.Bacrac, D.Liversedge, E.McArthur (Chair), with Librarian/Programme Coordinator Jennifer Jeynes in attendance. Sunday Concerts: The Executive Committee. Staff Structure: N.13acrac, D.Langdown, D.Liversedge, J.Rayner (Chair). SPES Staff Administrative Secretary to the Society: Marina Ingham Tel: 020 7242 8034 Librarian/Programme Coordinator: Jennifer Jeynes M.Sc. Tel: 020 7242 8037 Hall Manager: Peter Vlachos MA. For Hall bookings: Tel: 020 7242 8032 Caretakers: Eva Auhrechtova, Shaip Bullaku, David Wright Tel: 020 7242 8033 AdministrativelClerical Staff: Carina Kelsey, Victoria Le Fevre, Nanu Patel New Member Wc welcome to membership Geoffrey Hazard of London

Obituary We regret to report the death of Life Member Margaret D. Thomas. Ethical Record, NovemberlDecember, 2004 THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS: THE MADNESS OF CHARLES AND MARY LAMB Dr. Sarah Burton The Annual Skene Lecture, given to the Ethical Society, 18 July 2004 (A Double Life. A biouraphy of Charles & Mary Lamb. Viking, 2003.ISBN 0 670 89399 4. £16.99)

Charles and Mary Lamb wrote some of the most original and moving prose of the Romantic canon. Friends of the Wordsworths, Coleridge, Hazlitt and Mary Shelley, among others, they were known and loved not only for their literary skills but for the affection they bore each other and the courage with which they faced the tragedy at the centre of their lives: Mary suffered regular bouts of psychological disturbance, during one of which she had attacked and killed their elderly and disabled mother.

The inseparability of Charles and Mary Lamb was a legend in their own lifetime. 'As, amongst certain classes of birds, if you have one you have the other,' wrote Thomas de Quincey, 'so, with respect to the Lambs... seeing or hearing the brother, you knew that the sister could not be far off.' Although Mary has tended to be portrayed as the dependent partner in their relationship, from their correspondence it is clear that their dependence was mutual. As Charles wrote to a friend during one of Mary's absences:

I have every reason to suppose that this illness, like all her former ones, will be but temporary; but I cannot always feel so. Meantime she is dead to me, and I miss a prop. All my strength is gone, and I am like a fool, bereft of her co-operation. I dare not think, lest I should think wrong; so used am I to look up to her in the least and the biggest perplexity. To say all that I know of her would be more than I think anybody could believe or even understand; and when I hope to have her well again with me it would be sinning against her feelings to go about to praise her: for I can conceal nothing that I do from her. She is older, and wiser, and better, than me. and all my wretched imperfections I cover to myself by resolutely thinking on her goodness. She would share life, death, heaven and hell, with me. She lives but for me.

Charles had many male correspondents, yet while he frequently praised his sister in those letters, he never unburdened himself in this vein. The friend to whom he wrote these words was Dorothy Wordsworth, who was perhaps the one of their circle best able to comprehend that the sibling relationship could be an agonising, as well as a companionable, kind of marriage. Lamenting his own short-comings, Charles invoked connubial imagery when he wrote of his sister: 'I know that she has cleaved to me, for better, for worse.'

Charles And Mary Suffered Depression For better, for worse indeed. Both Charles and Mary suffered from depression. Just as they provided mutual support and —I believe —inspiration, when their periods of depression coincided they were the worst possible company for each other. As Mary wrote to Sarah Stoddart in 1805: You would laugh, or you would cry, perhaps both, to see us sit together looking at each other with long and rueful faces, & saying how do you do? & how do you do? & then we fall a crying & say we will be better on the morrow — he says we are like tooth ach & his friend gum bile, which though a kind of ease, is but an uneasy kind of ease, a comfort of rather an uncomfortable sort.

Ethical Record, NovemberThecernbet; 2004 3 Despite the fact that the Lambs' double singleness makes them ripe subjects for a joint account of their lives, there is a major problem in the imbalance of material — we simply know so much more about Charles than we do about Mary. Biographers abhor a vacuum.ln writing my book, A Double Life, I faced two possible approaches, both of which were unsatisfactory: firstly to adhere rigidly to the little information we have about Mary and accept that the book will be 90% Charles and 10% Mary; or secondly to attempt educated guesses about the prodigious gaps. As an academic, speculation makes me extremely uncomfortable; but as a writer I am obliged to keep Mary's story going. The problems of speculation are rendered greater when we fall easily into the habit of assuming that the little information we do have is typical. How likely is it, really, that Mary's surviving letters are typical of her letters in general? Were, say, twenty of all the letters you have ever written in your life randomly selected, how accurate a portrait of you could a stranger construct from them? The biographer is obliged to acknowledge that much of what he or she can bring to the subject represents just slender guesses. We are clutching at straws.

The further problem in Mary's case of course is her recurring bouts of derangement. For a significant part of nearly every year of her life she was confined to a madhouse. We can be pretty certain that the most interesting material on this subject has been destroyed or suppressed and consequently lost. I found myself turning to the same passages in the same letters, reading and rereading as though I expected something new suddenly to appear between the familiar lines. The absence of information about Mary's illness and particularly on the circumstances of her confinement has been described as a deafening silence — hence my rather flippant title. I decided that since Mary's madness played such a major role in the Lambs' drama, yet it appeared to be a role with very few lines, that I would begin by trying to find out more about madness and how it was perceived and handled at the time. While' this journey appeared to offer more questions than answers, I felt they were questions that were extremely pertinent to the story.

What To Do With The Criminally Insane In 1786 Margaret Nicholson attempted to attack King George III with a dessert knife. As soon as she was discovered to be deranged she was confined in Bethlem Hospital. She was not committed for trial, nor was there any talk of her hanging. This was the usual way of dealing with the criminally insane. The same discretion was widely applied and Mary Lamb was one such beneficiary: she was not treated as a criminal but as a lunatic. She did not stand trial, and was declared insane only at the coroner's court which sat to establish the cause of her mother's death.

Mary was even more fortunate than Margaret Nicholson, as she was not sent to Bedlam. At the time Mary killed her mother an insane person charged with a criminal offence could be 'liberated on security being given that he should properly be taken care of as a lunatic'. At this time it was the family, rather than the state, in cases like Mary's, who took responsibility for arranging care for the mentally ill. Had Mary committed the same crime three years later than she did, it would have been a different story.

4 Ethical Record, NovemberlDecember, 2004 In 1800 the King was again the victim of a deranged would-be assassin, when James Hadfield shot and wounded him. Because of the seriousness of the crime, Hadfield did stand trial, but was acquitted on the grounds of insanity. The verdict was significant on two counts. Firstly it demonstrated the triumph of a humane approach to a mentally ill individual over what might have been a more politically expedient response (Hadfield was, after all, an ex-soldier, and attacked the King during a period when revolutionary war and radical insurgence were at their height). Secondly, it exposed a legal loophole, because the law made no provision for Hadfields future safe-keeping. An Act for the Safe Keeping of Insane Persons charged with Offences (1800) was consequently rushed through Parliament, which provided that anyone charged with treason, murder, or felony who was acquitted on the grounds of insanity was to be kept in strict custody 'during His Majesty's pleasure.' Under this Act, Mary would not only have stood trial for her offence, but would have been committed to Bedlam, probably for the rest of her life. - The cases of Margaret Nicholson and James Hadfield were of course high- profile and well-documented due to the eminence of their victim, but George III made a more significant contribution to .the history of mental illness: his own derangement caused the subject of madness to figure on the public opinion agenda. (His first mental disturbance occurred in 1788 and he suffered repeated bouts of illness before sinking into senility from 1809.) His case was widely discussed at the time. While to those like Percy Bysshe Shelley the King's physical and mental deficiencies only compounded his political failings (vis-a-vis Shelley's 'old, mad, blind, despised king'), more generally this factor may have contributed to the sense in which the mentally ill were objects of pity rather than of contempt. The press report of the Lamb murder conveys this same sense of pity for the whole family as victims, including the deranged perpetrator of the terrible crime.

Let Us Debunk The Myths To put Mary's situation in a meaningful context it is necessary to understand how mental illness was viewed and managed during this period. Firstly, there are myths to debunk. The idea that the ill-treatment of inmates in lunatic asylums was both universal and seen as legitimate is wholly misleading. Similarly, the notion that the mentally ill were officially perceived as somehow less than human (which simultaneously justified their inhumane treatment) is also untrue. There were many, too many, instances of barbaric abuse of such people at this time; what is important is that such practices went against the prevailing values of the time, rather than being in line with them. Throughout the eighteenth century advertisements for madhouses promised 'gentleness and kindness', 'the greatest tenderness and humanity' towards those in their care and an abhorrence of 'any violence to any patient'. Benjamin Faulkner, a madhouse keeper in the 1780s, was not untypical in arguing for the treatment of lunatics as 'rational creatures ... with attention and humanity'. Private madhouses also often touted the pleasant environments they offered, the clean air and the good food. How often such standards were maintained is another matter; the point here is that such advertisements demonstrate that these were appealing ideas of how the mentally ill should be cared for, and that their ill- treatment was far from socially sanctioned. (Even the rules of the Bethlem Hospital as early as 1677 expressly forbade the beating or abuse of the inmates, 'neither shall any offer force unto them but upon absolute Necessity'.)

Ethical Record, NovemberlDecember, 2004 5 Neither were the insane perceived as a race apart; indeed, as Roy Porter has observed, 'insanity might be widely seen as a hazard of humanity, a fate which, under desperate circumstances, could seize anyone and everyone, for a galaxy of reasons, from the bite of a rabid dog to oppressive weather (especially during the 'dog days' of Midsummer Madness) to earwigs in the head (according to Cornish folklore) or overwhelming grief, pride, love or joy.' He also notes (which we know to have been recognised in Mary's case) that mad people were by no means necessarily mad all the time: 'insanity was a blow afflicting by degrees, in fits, coming and going with remissions, oscillating in intensity.'

The Private Madhouse Although there was a large degree of sympathy for Mary, there remained the practical problem of what was to be done with her. Her father was barely aware of what was going on and had for some time before the murder been in no state to make decisions. Their brother John proving characteristically unhelpful, the burden of responsibility fell to Charles, then only twenty-one years old. Immediately after the murder, probably at Charles's suggestion, Mary was taken to a private madhouse.

The use of private madhouses was far from unusual, as there was no state provision for the care of the mentally ill. Even following the Act of 1800 (prompted by Hadfield's case) Parliament built no asylums, nor authorised any to be built, and it was to be another 45 years before it required local authorities to provide them. The infamous Bethlam Hospital was a charity and theoretically existed only to cater for paupers; it also discouraged 'incurables'. Moreover it serviced not just the capital city but the whole country, and was consequently always oversubscribed. From the pauper whose parish was prepared to pay to the aristocrat who could not be managed at home, private care was the only solution.

Private madhouses were usually much smaller than is generally imagined, catering perhaps for a dozen inmates. Care, in this largely unregulated industry, varied from the exemplary to the appalling. The Rev. Dr. Francis Willis ran a private madhouse in Greatford, Lincolnshire, where the regime astonished one visitor (Frederick Reynolds), who noticed on his approach to the town, 'almost all the surrounding ploughmen, gardeners, threshers, thatchers, and other labourers, attired in black coats, white waistcoats, black silk breeches and stockings, and the head of each hien poudree, frisee et arranger. These were the doctor's patients: and dress, neatness of person and exercise being the principal features of his admirable system, health and cheerfulness conjoined towards the recovery of every person attached to that most valuable asylum.' (Dr. Willis also treated George III.) Dr. Edward Fox's madhouse, near Bristol, catered for the kind of patient who could not be suffered to wander in the surrounding fields; its yards were surrounded by twelve foot high walls, but Dr Fox had thoughtfully provided 'large mounds of earth ... raised in the centre, which allow the patients to enjoy the view without danger of getting over the wall.' At Dr Fox's the visitor found each patient had an airy, clean separate bedroom, and that occupational therapies were employed, as well as music, board-games and a bowling-green for recreation. The doctor also kept 'silver pheasants', doves and greyhounds for his patients' amusement. While `two or three' patients were in straitjackets, none were in chains or in bed. 28 servants serviced 70 patients in premises 'delightfully and cheerfully situated'. 6 Ethical Record, NovemberlDecember, 2004 Unfortunately, many private madhouses fell short of these high standards. Although many abuses were successfully covered up for the benefit of patients' friends and relations who visited, those on the inside - both fellow inmates and visiting doctors - testified to a catalogue of gross neglect, routine beatings, rape, torture and even murder occurring within the walls of the worst of these establishments. Corruption was de rigeur in such places. On the petty level, it was common practise to steal and sell new clothes brought for patients and then inform relatives that the patient had ripped them to shreds and needed more, as it was to charge exhorbitant sums for drugs which were never bought, let alone administered.

More serious corruption also abused both the individual and the law. All manner of perfectly sane but troublesome and tiresome people could conveniently be removed to the private madhouse, for a sizeable fee to the keeper, who could even arrange to come and drag the person from their bed at home in the middle of the night. This is exactly what happened to Rev. George Chawner, aged sixty, whose adulterous wife paid to have him taken out of the way. He was incarcerated for seven years before he managed to escape. (His subsequent prosecution of the madhouse failed on a technicality.) On the other hand, the madhouse also provided asylum for sane criminals - again at a price. Lord de Dunstanville paid II I200 per annum to a private madhouse to keep his brother in the luxury to which he was accustomed in order to evade legal action for presumably unmentionable crimes. 'These houses are, in a hundred cases,' asserted one ex-inmate, 'mere cloaks to avoid punishment of the law'. Although madhouses had to submit to official inspections, contemporary accounts show that it was an easy matter to hide potentially embarrassing patients and render others incapable of conversation by drugging or intimidating them beforehand. More staggeringly audacious was the substitution of a patient who had complained to the authorities with a raving maniac (in no position to question his or her ascribed identity) for questioning when the authorities investigated!

'Boarding Out' The practise of 'boarding out' patients was also widespread. Those who ran private madhouses would, when the madhouse was full to capacity, commonly pay their keepers (as employees were called) or ex-keepers to maintain individuals in their own homes, or premises rented especially for this purpose; many doctors and clergymen also took in single patients. Again, the standards of care varied enormously. The advantage for the individual boarded with a caring keeper was obvious: the patient benefited from one-to-one attention, a more normal physical environment and better quality social interaction - at its best this sort of care represented a kind of foster-home for adults, an ideal of 'care in the community'. However there was unfortunately an enormous advantage for the unscrupulous keeper: the law offered no protection, no system of inspection, and no standards of care governing the treatment of individually boarded-out patients. Worse, with no witness but the four walls around them, abuse could occur in utter secrecy.

Mary Lamb was later to experience 'boarding out' and also spent long periods in the Hoxton madhouses. The large private asylum was at this time highly exceptional. At the time of Mary's crime there were probably only three in the

Ethical Record, NovemberlDecember, 2004 7 whole country, all within a few hundred yards of each other, at Hoxton. Hoxton (or Hogsdon) had a history of association with care for the mentally ill. A century before Mary first entered there. Hoxton was already the destination of the majority of London's private mental patients. So synonymous was the place with madness that, just as Bethlem has given us the term 'bedlam', one of Hoxton's institutions, BaImes House, is believed to have given birth to the expression 'barmy'. Over the ensuing years Mary was to spend time at both Balmes House (by that time renamed Whitmore House) and at Hoxton House, where Charles had also been voluntarily confined. The third institution, Holly House, catered principally for paupers.

Given the extent to which these places featured in their lives, Charles and Mary's surviving writings are — as mentioned earlier - deafeningly silent on the quality of care and living conditions in the Hoxton madhouses. This absence of material has made it easy for biographers to skim over the subject, probably also having considered the fact that Mary returned repeatedly to their custody, sometimes voluntarily, but always with Charles's consent, and consequently not unreasonably assuming that this pointed to the Lambs finding the Hoxton madhouses satisfactory. All the extraneous evidence, however, suggests quite a different story, as I hope to make apparent.

Since the 'day of horrors', at the onset of each of her recurring bouts of insanity, Mary had been taken to one of file Hoxton madhouses. After 1817 it appears that she was instead boarded out with one of the female keepers. This change in strategy has tended to be attributed to the increased comfort and convenience of such an arrangement, and to the slight improvement in the family's finances which made it possible. However, it seems highly probable that her removal from the private madhouse is linked to a sequence of scandals, revelations and official reports concerning the management of private madhouses at this time.

A Regime Of Brutality A Statement of the Cruelties, Abuses and Frauds which are practised in Mad- Houses, by J.W. Rogers, which appeared in 1815, constitutes a catalogue of crimes against the inmates of these institutions which Rogers, in his capacity as visiting physician, had witnessed with his own eyes. Rogers described a regime of brutality and inhumanity which, he said, amounted to 'a combination of evils, moral and physical, sufficient to overpower the soundest intellect'. It was not unusual, he said, for patients to be left chained to their beds indefinitely; unable to turn, they developed sores which, due to the general filth, became infected: 'In this state some constitutions will hold out long, and endure the greatest torture, before death relieves them.' Patients who refused food were often brutally force fed, leading to horrible injuries: in one case Rogers knew of 'the upper part of the mouth was forced through with the handle of a spoon' - less fortunate patients suffocated. Lunatics who talked too much were gagged, or had their whole heads bandaged, he said, 'with such indifference to the consequences, that respiration is rendered extremely difficult and painful, and it becomes a species of torture consistent with the general barbarity of the place'. One of the most disturbing sights Rogers witnessed was patients being beaten while chained hand and foot, secured in chairs. One man was blinded in one eye by such a beating. Almost worse than the physical cruelty towards patients, was the evident indifference of the keepers to their charges. 'Dirty' patients were whipped out of bed in nothing but their shirts

8 Ethical Record, NovemberlDecetnber, 2004 to be mopped down at an outside pump by a keeper even when snow was on the ground. Rogers saw three wretched women occupying a bunk designed for one, naked and covered only with a piece of old carpet. He found another in a similarly pathetic state who no-one had noticed was dead. A Description of the Crimes and Horrors in the Interior of Warburton's Private Mad-House was anonymously published in about 1822 and painted a depressingly similar picture.

Why are these two publications significant to this story? It is apparent from minutes of the evidence submitted to the Select Committee appointed to look into the abuses in madhouses in 1815 that Rogers had been a visiting surgeon at Warburton's madhouse; parallels between the evidence he gave to the Committee and his published account (which did not mention the institution by name) strongly suggest that many of the incidents of abuse he related had occurred at Warburton's. Further parallels between these incidents and those described in the anonymous account of The Crimes and Horrors in the Interior of Warburton's Private Mad- House confirm the fact that both writers were describing Warburton's madhouse. William Warburton was master of Whitmore House, Hoxton, and just as Sir Jonathan Miles's madhouse, Hoxton House, was now known familiarly as Miles's Madhouse, so Whitmore house was now known as Warburton's madhouse. Whitmore - or Warburton's - was the very madhouse in which Mary Lamb was regularly confined.

How Was Mary Treated? When I discovered this unpleasant fact I attempted to console myself with the thought that Mary Lamb, as a private patient whose care was paid for by her family rather then by her parish, and who was after all something approaching middle- class, might have been in a different bracket, a different part of the building, receiving a different standard of treatment. The evidence was not encouraging. Rogers saw 'gentlemen', including 'a gallant officer, who had highly distinguished himself', beaten while manacled hand and foot to a chair; he saw `the wife of a respectable tradesman' treated with 'excessive cruelty by her keeper' (being beaten against the bedstead, and fed spoonfuls of salt), whilst a 'young married lady' (significantly not merely a 'woman') 'died in great misery' having been so violently force fed that her teeth were falling out and 'her gums were putrid'.

The author of A Description of the Crimes.., took advantage of his own anonymity to name names, should anyone be in any doubt as to the indiscriminate brutality of the keepers at Warburton's. William Congreve Alcock, once MP for the county of Wexford, in Ireland, was regularly knocked down by his keeper and often had 'his mouth stuffed with human ordure, in order,' so his keeper said, `to make him know good victuals when they were placed before him'. The author also happened to walk in as Miss Rolleston, daughter of Stephen Rolleston, Chief Clerk in the Secretary of State's Office, being 'beaten with a broom-stick on the breast'. He goes on: have seen the person of that child, for so I must call one bereft of reason, prostituted on the steps leading to the lodge, by more than one keeper. I have heard it mentioned to Warburton, and his answer has been, "it is no matter; she don't know what is done to her." ... Mary Wilson, her keeperess, would often say, "Go to your den, you bitch, or I'll beat your brains out." On another occasion our witness writes 'Poor Miss Rolleston one morning was found in the room of Mr. Daniels, a gentleman called to the bar, but unfortunately deranged. The keeperess,

Ethical Record, NovemberlDecember, 2004 9 who had not sanctioned this visit, dragged her out by the hair of her head, beat her head repeatedly against the wall, and then tying her legs, flogged her as children are flogged at school, in the presence of half-a-dozen monsters in the shape of men, whose remarks at the time are too indelicate - too shocking for repetition.' The author concludes: 'A greater sink of villainy never was erected than Warburton's Mad-house. A more helpless being exists not within its walls than Miss Rolleston.' There are, unfortunately, many more hideous examples.

The author of A Description of the Crimes and Horrors describes a case disturbingly similar to Mary Lamb's. He writes: 'Mrs Wakefield, the authoress of many good books for little children, is frequently an inmate of Whitmore House,' he tells us. 'When she recovers, and the paroxysm goes off, she returns to society, but when she is ill they (the keepers) rob her of all she possesses. I remember - can I ever forget it? - when they stripped her in the cellar of all her apparel, which was new, and sent her up naked, all but her shift, into the parlour, pretending she had thrown them down the necessary; a new dress was ordered, and the keeperesses divided her garments amongst them.' (The insane being well known to be 'great destroyers of apparel', this scam was widely employed in corrupt madhouses.) The fact that Mrs Wakefield, like Mary, was an occasional patient at Warburton's begs the question why she did not complain to her friends and family of her treatment there. Two possible explanations are admissable: that she was in such a state that she was unaware of the abuses, or could not later remember them, or that she did not think she would be believed, and would possibly be thought mad again - she would have been only too aware of the consequences of her complaint if she found herself at Warburton's again. If Mary was similarly abused, either of the same factors might explain her silence on the subject.

Did Charles Know? It is an inescapable fact that these abuses were occurring within the same walls that confined Mary Lamb, at the time that she was confined there and to people like her. While we cannot conclude from this that she personally was abused, we can be far from certain that she was not. Even taking the most optimistic view, that she escaped the ill treatment which seemed universally practised at Warburton's madhouse, she could not have failed to hear the blows, the curses and the screams, nor, unless she was kept perpetually in solitary confinement, to witness the consequences of the abuses on the persons of those women of her own class whose 'whole appearance demonstrated extreme ill treatment', or those who, as a result of being routinely punched in the face, 'exhibited an appearance truly horrible'. It seems impossible that Mary could have been unaware of what went on at Warburton's unless she was completely insensible throughout her sojourns, which we know she was not. Whether Charles knew is a different, and more delicate matter. What is certain is that Warburton's keepers were adept at presenting an entirely misleading 'front' to visitors. The author of Warburton's Mad-House, who was himself incarcerated there, knew that while the conditions in which pauper patients were kept excited very little interest, patients paying at the higher rate would be cleaned up and brought into the front parlour to receive visitors, who assumed this was where they always resided.

It is clear from his letters that Charles placed great faith in the women who had immediate responsibility for Mary. Presumably he was under the impression

10 Ethical Record, NovemberlDecember, 2004 that these were of a different breed from those encountered by Rogers while he was a visiting surgeon at the same madhouse at the same time, in whom he was 'sorry to be obliged to say' he observed 'even a greater degree of ferocity, if possible, ... than in the men'.

The author of Warburton's Mad-tIouse's account of the methods by which visitors were deceived by the female keepers is worth quoting at length. Like Miss Rolleston, one 'harmless lunatic' known as 'Crazy Jane' was routinely raped by the male keepers, only to be beaten afterwards by her female keeper who declared 'she could not keep her from the men'. This was, our witness writes: ...a burning lie to my certain knowledge; depraved in themselves, they knew not what virtue meant, and the sacred stream of pity never flowed in their corrupt veins. Mr. Chawner, the clergyman, once emphatically denounced those women to the housekeeper as 'the sweepings of Hell,' if so, it is a pity that place should ever be swept; at all events, they are the scum of the earth, and were the kennels of St. Giles's to be raked for infamy, none would be found to equal them; yet they dressed well, and could assume a look of cheerful humility, and shew tenderness to their patients when occasion called for them thus to do penance to the real sentiments of their base hearts. I have seen them receive presents from the afflicted friends for their kindness, when those, from whom they received this reward, were worse used by them than any others.

One afternoon, Miss Rolleston ran up stairs before the housekeeper in a rude romping way, as might be expected from her situation. The old lady, to teach her respect, as she said, ordered her to be straight-waistcoated; it was hardly done before her parents came, when the old sycophant herself brought her down stairs into the parlour neatly dressed, and received from her mother, as a reward for her humanity, a silk dress, and when they were gone, she laughed at their folly, and ordered the punishment of the waistcoat again to be inflicted on the poor girl, unconscious of giving any offence.

Patients Were Drugged There was a lady confined by her husband, labouring under melancholy madness, or rather a powerful nervous complaint; he called every Sunday to see her, and she always entreated him with tears, to have her removed, but gave no reason why she wished it, and the keeperesses took care they should never be left alone together, from fear that she might tell 'the secrets of her prison-house.'

This lady was sufficiently in control of her senses to know better than to be seen to tell her secrets. Another female patient whose letter of complaint was intercepted was, 'as a general admonition for her presumption, ... well flogged with a rope, and tied to her bed-post for a week, not permitting her to retire for the purposes of nature, and the stench in the room was abominable'. Patients deemed likely to blow the whistle on their gaolers were heavily drugged when visitors were expected and the author of Warburton's Mad-house confidently asserted that even 'the medical visitors of Hoxton mad-house know nothing of its general management'.

While regular visitors to the Hoxton madhouses — including Charles Lamb — could therefore not be expected to suspect the crimes which were perpetrated within its walls, it does seem peculiar that Charles continued to return Mary to

Ethical Record, NovemberlDecember, 2004 I l Warburton's after 1815, when a Select Committee of the House of Commons reported itself horrified by the regime and conditions in the Hoxton madhouses. As I acknowledged earlier, all this offers more questions than answers, but it does suggest that Mary's bouts of confinement represented something more subtle and more disturbing than mere blank spaces in the lives of her and her brother.

The origins of Mary Lamb's mental illness are mentioned nowhere in the writings left by her and her brother. However, there is good reason to believe that Mary's childhood was a difficult one. As Charles was to write in a letter to Samuel Taylor Coleridge many years later:

Poor Mary, my mother never understood her right. She loved her, as she lo‘ ed us all with a Mother's love, but in opinion, in feeling, & sentiment, & disposition, bore so distant a resemblance to her daughter, that she never understood her right. Never could believe how much she loved her — but met her caresses, her protestations of filial affection, too frequently with coldness and repulse. Still she was a good mother, God forbid I should think of her but most respectfully, most affectionately. Yet she would always love my brother above Mary, who was not worthy of one tenth of that affection, which Mary had a right to claim.

Is Margaret Green Autobiographical? A story Mary wrote in middle age gives some insight into her childhood loneliness. As a child she was sent every summer to stay with her grandmother, housekeeper to Blakesware, a stately pile near Widford in Hertfordshire. It appears that her story Margaret Green describes Mary's own experiences at Blakesware. Mrs Beresford in the story (representing the real owner, Mrs Plumer) received no visitors and used only a few rooms in the house, spending most of her time, now that her eyesight was too poor for her to sew herself, superintending Margaret's mother's (Mary's grandmother's) progress on whatever project was currently in hand. Mrs Beresford would greet little Margaret in the morning and, apart from complimenting her on her psalm reading, refrained from further conversation with the child for the rest of the day. Perhaps following her employer's example, or perhaps believing that children (or girls, at any rate) should be seen and not heard, Margaret's mother also

' ...almost wholly discontinued talking to me. I scarcely ever heard a word addressed to me from morning to night. If it were not for the old servants saying "Good morning to you, miss Margaret," as they passed me in the long passages, I should have been the greatest part of the day in as perfect a solitude as Robinson Crusoe.'

Mary had free range of the old house, its cavernous rooms and shrouded furnishings. 'An old broken battledore, and some shuttlecocks with most of the feathers missing, were on a marble slab in one corner of the hall, which constantly reminded me that there had once been younger inhabitants here than the old lady and her gray-headed servants. In another corner stood a marble figure of a satyr: every day I laid my hand on his shoulder to feel how cold he was.'

The solitary child used to frequent the gallery of family portraits, wishing 'to have a fairy's power to call the children down from their frames to play with me'. There can be little doubt but that Mary was left to her own devices far too much. The central narrative of the story Margaret Green is so extremely peculiar for a

12 Ethical Record, NovemberlDecember, 2004 children's story that it seems unlikely it could have come from anywhere other than life.

Mary's recollections of Blakesware have the flavour of semi-secrecy and suggest illegitimate pleasures. 'It must have been because I was never spoken to at all,' reflects Margaret Green, 'that I forgot what was right and what was wrong.'. Forbidden more than half an hour's reading a day, she would wait until the Family Bible was unattended before daring 'softly to lift up the leaves and peep into it'. Similarly, in the shuttered best suite of rooms, where the beautiful hand-worked upholstery was covered with dust sheets, she would again peep under the covers, 'for I constantly lifted up a corner of the envious cloth, that hid these highly-prized rarities from my view'. Margaret in the story is intrigued by a locked door, which she has attempted many times to open, when one day, it allows her in. Her precious discovery proves to be a large library. After a fruitless search, over several visits, for something 'entertaining' Margaret at last finds a book called Makometism Explained. Obsessive and unmediated absorption in the book results, in the story, in Margaret concluding that 'I must be a Mahometan, for I believed every word I read'.

Mahometism Explained At length I met with something which I also believed, though I trembled as I read it: this was, that after we are dead, we are to pass over a narrow bridge, which crosses a bottomless gulf. The bridge was described to be no wider than a silken thread; and it said, that all who were not Mahometans would slip on one side of this bridge, and drop into the tremendous gulf that had no bottom. I considered myself as a Mahometan, yet I was perfectly giddy whenever I thought of myself passing over this bridge.

One day, seeing the old lady totter across the room, a sudden terror seized me, for I thought, how would she ever be able to get over the bridge? Then too it was, that I first recollected that my mother would also be in imminent danger; for I imagined she had never heard the name of Mahomet, because I foolishly conjectured this book had been locked up for ages in the library, and was utterly unknown to the rest of the world.

All my desire was now to tell them the discovery I had made; for I thought, when they knew of the existence of Mahometism Explained, they would read it, and become Mahometans, to ensure themselves a safe passage over the silken bridge. But it wanted more courage than I possessed, to break the matter to my intended converts; I must acknowledge that I had been reading without leave; and the habit of never speaking, or being spoken to, considerably increased the difficulty.

My anxiety on this subject threw me into a fever. I was so ill, that my mother thought it necessary to sleep in the same room with me. In the middle of the night I could not resist the strong desire I felt to tell her what preyed so much on my mind. I awoke her out of a sound sleep, and begged she would be so kind as to be a Mahometan. She was very much alarmed, for she thought I was delirious, which I believe I was; for I tried to explain the reason of my request, but it was in such an incoherent manner that she could not at all comprehend what I was talking about.

The next day a physician was sent for, and he discovered, by several questions that he put to me, that I had read myself into a fever.

Ethical Record, NovemberlDecemher, 2004 13 A Narrative Based On Real Experience The doctor prescribes drugs and rest but after a few days decides to remove Margaret from the environment and lakes her to stay with him and his wife. (As mentioned earlier, it was not unusual, at this time, for individuals suffering from mental illness to be taken into the families of doctors —and also clergymen —in the reasonable belief that a change of scene plus a little benevolent objective care might effect an improvement.)

The doctor's wife prescribes a ride to Harlow fair, and during the journey learns not only about Margaret's experiment with Mahometism, but also 'the solitary manner in which I had spent my time'. The story ends happily, with Margaret returning from the fair with a basket full of presents and a head empty of Mahomet. Over the next few days the doctor's wife plays with Margaret, invites other children to play, and generally entertains and diverts her, while also finding time to have a serious talk about 'the error' into which Margaret had fallen. Margaret returns home 'perfectly cured'.

Several elements combine to suggest that the narrative, as well as the setting and characters, is at least based on a real experience. Firstly, the subject-matter is highly unusual for contemporary juvenile fiction. The extremely evocative style of its telling also speaks of an authentic experience, vividly remembered. The story appeals to both the adult and the child's point of view in a manner which suggests a real episode in childhood reflected upon in adulthood. Finally, it is known that Mary suffered at least one episode of psychological disturbance early in her life, although it has never been possible to establish its nature or its occasion. It seems to me that Margaret Green gives us the best clues yet to Mary's juvenile self and to the early causes of her mental instability.

I hope I've demonstrated that the fact that there appears to be little or no information on a subject should not deter us. The truth is there, somewhere. The most important lesson I learnt while writing this book was to be alert to, and listen to, silence.

CONWAY HALL JAZZ CLUB The first meeting of the Conway Hall Jazz Club was held in the Library of Conway Hall on 30 November. It opened its programme to an audience of fifteen with a disc recording of one of the series of concerts by Humphrey Lyttelton and his band given in the main hall in the nineteen-fifties. Other recordings of mostly traditional jazz filled 2 hours that everyone enjoyed. The next meeting will be at 1830 on 18 January 2005. Don Liversedge.

South Place Ethical Society If you would like to be informed of SPES and other events at Conway Hall by email please mail: [email protected] Additional copies of the programme (A4 or A.5) can be sent by post to give to your friends and/or display on notice boards at your College, Community Centre, Library etc. Write to: Edmund McArthur, SPES Registrar Conway Hall 25 Red Lion Sq London WC1R 4LR

14 Ethical Record, NovemberlDeconher, 2004 WILLIAM K. CLIFFORD: MATHEMATICIAN AND PHILOSOPHER Roy Chisholm Emeritus Professor of Mathematics, University of Kent Lecture to the Ethical Society - 17 October 2004 Such Silver Currents, The story of William & Lucy Clifford. Lutterworth Press, Camb. ISBN 0 7188 3017 2.117.50

My wife Monty and I are pleased and honoured speak to you here, in Conway Hall, about William and Lucy Clifford.* William Clifford was a close friend of Moncure Conway: each of them sought to combat ignorance and superstition, in an age when it seemed just possible that peace, social justice and intellectual honesty might be within reach of mankind. Conway, like many of his age, had enormous respect for Clifford, calling him 'The Great Scientific Missionary'.

The Congress Of Liberal Thinkers William Clifford died in 1879, at the age of 33. In the previous year he, Moncure Conway and Thomas Huxley had set about organising a major international meeting, the Congress of Liberal Thinkers, to celebrate the centenary of Voltaire's death. You will know of Thomas Huxley, the leading public proponent of Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection. At this time, he was probably the most important and influential scientist in the country. The Congress was held at South Place, and was presided over by Huxley. It was a great success, with nearly 400 delegates, mainly from Europe and America - some of them women, which was unusual. The mix included Broad Churchmen, Unitarians, secularists, theists, atheists and Hindus. The only notable absentee was Clifford himself, who was regarded as the guiding spirit of the movement. In the spring of 1878, he fell seriously ill with tuberculosis, as he had done two years earlier. On each occasion Huxley took charge of the medical team, ordering Clifford abroad to take a complete rest in a warm climate. From the boat taking William and Lucy to Malta, he sent a message to the Congress; the essence of it was his familiar warning:

As to priestly organisation, 'the Church' has always been adverse to morality.

The Congress petered out within a year. As Conway put it, "The life of it as an organisation depended on the life of Clifford."

William Clifford was born in 1845, and spent his childhood in Exeter. William Clifford's father, also named William, was a respected figure in Exeter. A bookseller by trade, he was a member of the City council, and later Alderman and Deputy Mayor. William's second name, Kingdon, was his mother's family name: the family had lived in and around Exeter for many centuries. His childhood home still exists; I am happy to say that, at our suggestion, the Exeter Civic Trust have commemorated Clifford with a plaque on this house.

William's mathematical prowess was evident at an early age. On one occasion, he was shown a Chinese puzzle box, which needed various bits to be pushed in the right order to get it open. Without touching it, he examined the outside of the box carefully, put his head in his hands for a minute or two, and then without hesitation undid the box. Then he put it back together again. As Professor Smith of Oxford wrote after William's death, he was 'above all and beyond all a geometer'. * Monty Chisholm:c lecture on Lucy Clifford will appear in the January 05 ER 1 Ed.1 Ethical Record, NovemberlDecember, 2004 15 William's childhood in Exeter was happy apart from one major sadness: his mother died when he was only nine. He was educated at Mr. Templeton's Academy, and in 1860 moved to King's College, London, where he excelled. He was awarded scholarships in mathematics in all of the three years he was there, and in classical literature for two years. He also won prizes in literature, divinity, English language, and classical literature. At King's, he would attend the lectures of Professor James Clerk Maxwell.

William took great delight in solving and posing problems in the Educational Times. In September 1863, just before going to Cambridge, he wrote to the editor about the problem of finding the form of a kite-string under the action of the wind. On a rough trial the other day, the intrinsic equation seemed not very difficult to obtain; if I get at any result, I will send it to you tomorrow.

The Science Versus Religion Debate King's College was an Anglican institution, and in his time there Clifford held High Church beliefs. But in 1858, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace had published their paper on Natural Selection, and in the following year came Darwin's Origin of Species. It is hard to exaggerate the impact of its publication. It opened up the Science versus Religion debate which had been foreshadowed for many decades, and I am sure that you all know of the famous Oxford debate in 1860 between Thomas Huxley and Joseph Hooker on the one hand, and Samuel Wilberforce: 'Soapy Sam' asked Huxley whether he was descended from an ape on his grandfather's or his grandmother's side. Huxley claimed that he gave a dignified reply expressing his preference to have an ape, rather than Wilberforce, as an ancestor.

Oxford and Cambridge Universities were also Anglican institutions at that time, and the religious argument exploded in Cambridge in 1862, when a Tutor at Trinity Hall, named Leslie Stephen, resigned, on the grounds that he was required to teach students Biblical stories which he no longer believed. The controversy was in full spate when William Clifford arrived as a minor Scholar at Trinity College in 1863.

Clifford was described then as 'a young man of extraordinary mathematical powers, and eccentric in appearance and opinions'. He published his first mathematical paper when he was only eighteen and had been an undergraduate for just two months. His remarkable ability was quickly recognised. He was an all- round genius: linguist, philosopher, theologian, historian, gymnast and orator. He had a wide circle of friends, and delighted in their companionship. His dearest friend, Fred Pollock - later Sir Frederick Pollock, Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford - tells of his gymnastic ability and extraordinary nerve at heights, describing him hanging by his toes from the weathervane on a church tower.

Incidentally, I am happy to thank my son Dave, who works for the Sunday Times, for several cartoons depicting Clifford's gymnastic feats. Monty and I also want to acknowledge contributions to the biographical research by two colleagues. One is Dr. Ruth Farwell, now at South Bank University, who has been my mathematical collaborator for many years. The other is Professor Marysa Demoor of the University of Gent, who co-edited, with my wife Monty, a volume of letters

16 Ethical Record, NovemberlDecember, 2004 from Henry James to Lucy Clifford. Crucially important to our research, and to Monty's twin biography of William and Lucy, has been access to the private letters and papers of the Cliffords, granted by their descendents.

From our research we have learnt that William and Lucy Clifford were at the heart of London intellectual society during their few years of marriage. After William's death in 1879, Lucy maintained and developed friendships with many leading figures in literature, science and public life during her fifty years of widowhood. The exhibition which we and Ruth Farwell have created, and which is all around us, shows the affection and respect which many famous people felt towards William and Lucy Clifford.

William was renowned as a speaker. In his third year, he won the Trinity College declamation prize with a stunning piece on Sir Walter Raleigh. He gave his first public lecture at the Royal Institution in 1868, applying Darwinian ideas to the development of human minds. By this time, the writings and lectures of Darwin, Herbert Spencer, Huxley and John Tyndall, Director of the Royal Institution after Faraday's death, had led Clifford to adopt Huxley's agnosticism. He became a formidable enemy of the formality of religions. Following Huxley and Tyndall, Clifford became a leading proponent of Natural Selection and Scientific Naturalism.

Clifford's Measureless Irreverence In Cambridge. Clifford was prominent in many clubs and societies. One society, known as 'The Apostles', was notable because of the high intellectual qualities of its members. Their debates dealt with the most delicate issues of the time, but every member had to respect the views of other members, however much they might disagree with them. The club survived for at least 130 years. Among its many famous members were Alfred Tennyson, Denison Maurice (the founder of Christian Socialism), James Clerk Maxwell, Leslie Stephen, George Otto Trevelyan, Henry Sidgwick, Arthur Balfour, Frederic Maitland, Bertrand Russell, Maynard Keynes and Leonard Woolf. In the 20th century, infamous members were Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt. William Clifford was a natural candidate for membership of the Apostles, and was one of the most lively members. Many years later, the economist Alfred Marshall wrote:

If I might have verbatim reports of a dozen of the best conversations I have heard, I should choose two or three from among those evenings in which Sidgwick and Clifford were the main speakers.

Many fellow Apostles, including Fred Pollock, Henry Sidgwick and Leslie Stephen, remained Clifford's friends throughout his life. Before and after Clifford's death, the Clifford and Pollock families were on intimate terms. After William's death, Fred Pollock wrote the long biographical introduction to Clifford's Lectures and Essays.

In 1867, without working for his examinations, Clifford was Second Wrangler and Smith's Prizewinner. His religious backsliding did not prevent his election to a Fellowship of Trinity College in 1868, along with Fred Pollock. Clifford's measureless irreverence must have demanded a great deal of forbearance

Ethical Record, NovemberlDecember, 2004 17 from some of the existing Fellows; for example, over his undergraduate jingle: 0 Father, Son and Holy Ghost, We wonder which we hate the most. Be Hell, which they prepared before, Their dwelling now and evermore.

In 1870, Clifford was a member of the Royal Astronomical Society expedition to Sicily. The expedition was shipwrecked, but all personnel and instruments were saved. Clifford wrote about this to Lady Pollock, Fred's mother: Well, if ever a shipwreck was nicely and comfortably managed, wihout any fuss - but I can't speak calmly about it because I am so angry at the idiots who failed to save the dear ship - alas! my heart's in the waters close to Polyphemus's eye, which we put out.

Bertrand Russell: Clifford Was A Great Man The next year. 1871, William Clifford was appointed Professor of Applied Mathematics at University College, London - the Godless Institution of Gower Street, as it was known. He was recommended by James Clerk Maxwell, who ends his reference:

The pupils of such a teacher not only obtain clearer views of the subjects taught, but are encouraged to cultivate in themselves that power of thought which is so liable to be neglected amidst the appliances of education.

William's life in LOndon is described in his obituary in the Saturday Review of 15 March 1879:

In London, the same qualities that had won him so many friends in Cambridge, still stood him in good stead, and he rapidly drew round him a large circle of warm friends and admirers, among whom might be found all the best known names in science and literature. This power of winning affections ... was mainly due to the peculiarly winning gentleness and tenderness which characterised him ...Although the nature of his opinions and his style of championing them, raised countless enemies among those who knew him only from his writings and lectures .. it seemed quite impossible for anyone to feel hostility towards him after becoming personally acquainted with him.

His research work, University and public lectures, philosophical writings, and social and club activities continued to fill his life and to increase his already high reputation. In 1874, William Clifford was elected to a Fellowship of the Royal Society, and was its youngest member. Fred Pollock writes:

He might have been proposed at a much earlier time, but had then declined, turning it off with the remark that he did not want to be respectable yet.

In the same year, Clifford was also elected to the most select intellectual body in the country, the Metaphysical Society. This body was founded in 1869 to try to resolve the controversy over science and religion. The Metaphysical Society contained a galaxy of talent: Prime Ministers Gladstone and Balfour, the Archbishops of Westminster and York, Lord Tennyson, John Ruskin, J.J. Sylvester, Frederick Maurice, Henry Sidgwick, Walter Bagehot, Leslie Stephen and his brother James, R.H. Hutton, Huxley, Tyndall and a host of other leading figures in public life, literature, the churches, politics, science and philosophy. A quarter of

18 Ethical Record, NovemberlDecentber, 2004 the early members had been Apostles, and the polite rules of debate were to a great extent copied from the Apostles. The membership represented a wide range of religious opinion, from rigid Catholicism, through Anglican, Broad Church and Unitarian ideas, to the scientific philosophy of Huxley and Clifford. While Clifford argued vehemently against priesthoods of all religions, he regarded his fellow members as true friends, and respected their fundamental religious instincts.

Clifford's three talks to the Metaphysical Society were the basis of published articles, collected together posthumously with his other philosophical writings in Lectures and Essays, by Leslie Stephen and Fred Pollock. His talks and writings, like those of Huxley, were aimed at ordinary people. Typically, he gave a course of lectures on Geometry for the Ladies of Kensington. He believed that every reasonable person could understand the principles of science and logical thought if they were explained clearly and simply. He was an ideal person for the task; in his preface to the 1946 Knopf edition of Clifford's Common Sense of the Exact Sciences, Bertrand Russell wrote:

Clifford possessed an art of clarity such as belongs only to very few great - men...clarity that comes of profound and orderly understanding, by virtue of which, principles become luminous and deductions look easy

Clifford's Five Principles The title Common Sense of the Exact Sciences, chosen by Clifford, echoes the saying of Thomas Huxley, Science is organised common sense.

Reading Lectures and Essays has led me to think of Clifford as the "Common Sense" philosopher. Time and again he carefully presents facts to his audience, and then argues Is it not reasonable to assume that 2But Clifford thought that all practical questions, including those of religion and ethics, should be treated scientifically, by a straightforward interpretation of observed facts. This did not mean that he denied human qualities; on the contrary, Clifford's philosophy was based on the individual's place both in nature and in human society. He saw his own ideas as part of a stream of thought running through various societies, over thousands of years - all part of an unending search for a better understanding of the universe that we find around us.

To Clifford, 'common sense' did not mean the unquestioning acceptance of some mixture of wisdom, tradition and superstition handed down over generations. It meant `down-to-earth and reasonable', and this was the spirit of his of public lectures and journal articles. Together, they form a coherent and comprehensive philosophy. I shall try to summarise the basic principles he set out in a number of essays:

The First Principle: Clifford asserts the principle of scientific scepticism, expressed in his most famous essay The Ethics of Belief in these strong words:

It is wrong always, and for any one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

He explains that 'evidence' is the observation that two or more 'happenings'

Ethical Record, NovemberlDecember, 2004 19 occur repeatedly in some definite pattern. I see a flash of lightening, quickly followed by a peel of thunder. This happens repeatedly, so I assume that thunder and lightening are associated. A single coincidence of 'happenings' is not sufficient to justify a belief - this is only justified by a consistent repetition of similar coincidences.

Clifford And Conway Cause Havoc At Seances William Clifford and Moncure Conway established themselves as practical sceptics by causing havoc at seances. In Conway's autobiography, he describes how a Mrs Guppy of Hampstead began her séance by holding hands with the two of them, completing a circle round a table; then raps on the table instructed that lights be put out, and all the participants were told to ask for some small object to be thrown on the table by some mysterious means. After others had called for a rose, a slipper, a sausage, and so on, Clifford asked for the set of false teeth from his overcoat pocket in the hall, and Conway asked for a suitcase large enough that it could not be concealed under a ladies dress. Everything duly appeared except the false teeth and the large suitcase. Another medium, Mr Williams, performed a séance in Conway's house. To free his hands to perform his tricks, he had to get his little fingers unhooked from Conway and Clifford's, on the pretext that he needed to rest them. But Conway and Clifford refused to unhook, and Mr Williams fled the house in disarray.

Scientific scepticism was the basis of Clifford's atheism: he knew of no consistent evidence for the existence of a God. Remember that he was well versed in the history and theologies, not just of Christian sects, but also of a wide variety of religions.

The Second Principle: Clifford accepted the 'common-sense' and scientific view that we each have consistent evidence that other people and 'things' exist, and that they are continuous in space and time. You really are here, and I hope that most - of you will remain to the end of the lecture. Huxley expressed the view very simply: It is a good working hypothesis that other people exist.

The Third Principle embodies the 'uniformity of nature', meaning that the universe has an orderly structure, governed by natural laws. Through careful observation and rational thought, we steadily increase our partial understanding of these laws. Clifford rejected miracles, because they are a violation of the orderly structure of the universe. If God can arbitrarily suspend natural laws, he would say, there is no rational basis for our understanding.

The Fourth Principle: Darwinian evolution accounts for the physical make- up of living beings. Instead of the theological view, 'God made the Universe to suit humans', Natural Selection is based on scientific evidence that living things, including humans, have evolved bodies and nervous systems that are well adapted to the world around us.

The Fifth Principle is that there is evidence for a linking of 'mind' and 'brain'. For me, 'mind' means my conscious sensations, memory, thinking, and intentions. These are purely personal, and cannot be shared with other people. But even in the 1870s, there was increasing experimental evidence that these personal

20 Ethical Record, NovemberlDecember, 2004 psychological phenomena are regularly and systematically accompanied by experimentally observable physiological phenomena: messages in the nervous system and disturbances in the brain.

Clifford's Mind - stuff Clifford asserted what is now commonplace: mind is a property of matter in the brain. However, he took the argument much further, saying:

Consciousness cannot occur without a living brain - so there is no life after death, however comforting this idea may seem. This was a belief he re- asserted on his deathbed.

Since evolution ensures continuity between the most complex and the simplest of life forms, even an amoeba must have some kind of awareness out of which consciousness can emerge in a complex brain.

There is no discontinuity between organic and inorganic matter - no 'Life Force' attached to living matter — so the most elementary particles of matter must possess some very simple form of 'quasi-mental fact', as he expressed it. Clifford came to the conclusion that the Universe is made of what he called Mind-stuff. Unusually for him, he admitted that the concept of Mind-stuff might not be altogether clear - in fact, he wondered whether he himself understood it!

Clifford, Huxley and Tyndall were attacked for being 'materialists', with the implication that they believed that the universe consisted merely of 'dead inert matter'. In a famous speech to the British Association in 1874, Tyndall contested this implication, saying that while all of life, arts and science had evolved over the ages out of simple atoms and molecules, this did not diminish our wonderment at nature and humanity. Clifford's concept of Mind-stuff was an attempt to find a more fundamental link between matter and consciousness. Later, Bertrand Russell came to the same conclusion as Clifford, that mind and matter were inseparable. But as you know, we still do not understand their relationship.

From the very name 'Mind-stuff', and from his own explanations, it is clear that Clifford is not an epiphenomenalist: for him, consciousness was an essential ingredient of Mind-stuff, not just an optional extra tacked on to unfeeling matter. That is why it can be misleading to call him a 'materialise; in his day, he was called a 'monist', since he believed in the fundamental unity of all experience and existence.*

Clifford was also very concerned with the nature of society and morality. The basks of his social philosophy was the thought 'put yourself in his place'. Societies develop working rules, and individuals gradually develop an inherited sense of 'right and wrong'; this does not mean, says Clifford, that we are born knowing the Sermon on the Mount, but that we are naturally receptive to ideas of justice and social obligation. Clifford, following Darwin, accepted that there is an 'inner voice of Conscience'. But he insisted that it is not 'the voice of God' - it is the ancestral voice of what he calls The Tribal Self He says: The Voice of Conscience is the Voice * Epiphenomenalists allow that all matter might be conscious but would assert that, even so, this would make no difference to how matter behaves. [Ed.] Ethical Record, NovemberlDecember, 2004 21 of the Father Man within us; the accumulated instinct of the race is poured into each one of us.

He saw no need for a god; if he were asked 'How did the world begin?' his answer would be 'I don't know; but in a few hundred years, someone may find out something about it'. Admission of our ignorance was paramount to Clifford. He detested priesthoods because they claimed special knowledge which was not based on sound evidence; he thought that teaching children unsubstantiated beliefs was a particularly serious crime: Keep your children away from the priest, or he will make them enemies of mankind.

Clifford's Ethics Of Religion 'Detestation' of formal religion is not an exaggeration: he speaks of worshipping the toenails of some filthy monk. In his essay The Ethics of Religion he makes a very strong and very scholarly attack on Catholicism, arguing that it is a menace to the state and the moral fabric of society. He echoes the warning of Voltaire: Those who make you believe in absurdities can make you commit atrocities. In The Ethics of Belief Clifford outlines the dogmas laid down by the founders of the two major religions of the world, Mohammed and Buddha. He ends up contrasting the two sets of beliefs:

Mohammed tells us that there is one God, and that we shall live for ever in joy or misery, according as we believe in the Prophet or not. The Buddha says that there is no God, and that we shall be annihilated by and by if we are good enough. Both cannot be infallibly inspired; one or other must have been the victim of a delusion, and thought he knew that which he really did not know. Who dare say which?

Clifford's views were well known to the public, and when he was seriously ill, it was reported in the press that he had joined the Catholic Church. This prompted him to write this to the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette:

I was fairly astonished to see in your columns today a report that I had joined the Roman Catholic Church. I should have been amused at its incongruity, but the report amounts to a serious charge against me, unless I have ceased to be responsible. It is true that I have been somewhat unwell of late, but I am assured by Dr Andrew Clark that my indisposition had not yet taken the form of mental derangement.

'Clifford Algebras' Let us return to one of the principles of Clifford's philosophy — our evolution and adaptation, over the course of ages, to the world around us. There is remarkable way in which we have adapted to the fundamental nature the universe. At a very young age, infants learn to develop through sight and touch the concept of 'things', and, more remarkably, of the practical geometry of three-dimensional space. In his book The Common Sense of the Exact Sciences, Clifford explains carefully how we come to understand basic concepts such as number, space and position. In his mathematical research, the extremely important discovery of his 'geometric algebras', now called 'Clifford algebras', was based on a simple question. We can think of numbers as positions and movements on the number line - a very long ruler, with 'plus' going in one direction, and 'minus' going in the other - which is one-dimensional. Clifford's question was: how can we extend the rules of numbers (that is, the basic equations or axioms of numbers) to describe positions and 22 Ethical Record, NovemberlDecember, 2004 movements in space? As with many great ideas, his answerturned out to be very simple and elegant —he added only one new rule to the rules of number. If we think of progressing from the one-dimensional line even to two dimensions, we bring in the geometric concept ofperpendicularity of two distinct directions. Clifford's new rule, or equation, describes perpendicularity in algebraic terms.

Clifford thought of his algebras geometrically, and they are so fundamental that they have turned out to have wider and wider application and interpretation in many areas of mathematics. Later, I shall tell you the remarkable way in which his algebras anticipated fundamental theory of elementary particles. They have been implemented in numerous computer programs, which are widely used in physics and engineering. Another remarkable property is that each algebra describes exactly all possible arrangements of a number of `off-on'switches. Since this is the basis of all computing, Clifford algebras are a natural vehicle for theory of computing. They even have medical applications in tomography; for example, if small electric currents are passed through a set of electrodes on someone's head, it is sometimes possible to diagnose the position of a tumour from measurements of currents and voltages. Clifford algebras are one method of doing the necessary calculations.

A measure of the growth of interest in a subject is the number of conferences organised for it. At the University of Kent, we held the first full international conference on Clifford Algebra in 1985. This started a triennial series of meetings; the Sixth Was in 2002 in Tennessee, and the Seventh will be held next year in Toulouse. Many smaller conferences are now held on the subject, two or three a year, ail over the world. Before all this, in 1970, a small group of the most eminent mathematicians and physicists held a meeting at Princeton in the USA, to celebrate the centenary of a famous paper by Clifford, which I shall mention later.

In this country, the two mathematicians who hold the Order of Merit, Sir Michael Atiyah and Sir Roger Penrose, have admired Clifford for four decades. They contributed the Foreword and Afterword to Mrs Chisholm's biography of the affords. At this year's meeting of the British Association in Exeter, a former student of mine, Matthew Watkins, organised seven 'Clifford Walks', teaching the fundamentals of Clifford algebra by stepping along lines in a public car park, and playing a 'Clifford algebra' game with marked 'stones'. The rules of the game were the rules of Clifford algebras. He started playing the game in 2 dimensions, worked up to 3 dimensions, and then asked his audience how they could go on to 4 dimensions. After a pause, he said, Well, I just happen to have some 4th dimension stones in my haversack. They then went on playing exactly the same game as in 2 and 3 dimensions, but complicating by having 4, rather than 3, types of stone. Watkins' game exhibits the profound achievement of Clifford's algebras, that the rules which work in 2 and 3 dimensions can be extended indefinitely to describe, or indeed to define, what we mean by 4, 5, 23 or 679 dimensional space. We simply use the same basic rules, or axioms, but complicate things by having more and more types of 'stones', or 'basis vectors' as mathematicians call them.

Clifford: Space Might Not Be Euclidian Although Clifford explained the ordinary world in simple terms, he was very careful to qualify our everyday understanding of the universe: he emphasised that

Ethical Record, NovemberlDecember, 2004 our physical intuitions have been evolved on our human scales of space and time. He took issue with Immanuel Kant, who had postulated that our intuition of infinite Euclidean space was built in by God; this was a part of Kant's a priori knowledge. Clifford repeatedly conjectured that nature might have very different properties on small or large scales of distance and time. He also strongly criticised Clerk Maxwell, his teacher and collaborator, for saying that atoms were `manufactured articles' that had exact forms and lasted 'for ever': Clifford would not accept 'infinities' in physical space or time. Although the structure of atoms was known to be almost constant throughout geological times, Clifford saw no reason why atomic structure should not have evolved at some earlier time. Nowadays, when it seems likely that the early universe was a very small and immensely hot furnace, this is when the structure of elementary particles might have been determined. But that is something that we do not know or understand.

Clifford: All Knowledge Is Provisional Although Clifford, together with Huxley and Tyndall, opposed formal religions, they each expressed their awe and reverence for the universe and for life, and their wonderment at each stage of revelation of the secrets of nature. In the most poetic of his essays, Cosmic Emotion, Clifford emphasises the need to treat all our knowledge as provisional, since our human life is only a small part of the whole vastness of being. He did not think that there were any final answers to our questioning — only further questions. In his day there were very eminent scientists, as there are now, who claimed that `we' had almost discovered the Theory of Everything. We now know how ludicrous this belief was in the 19th century. Now, as in Clifford's day, the claim for the Theory of Everything is unscientific nonsense, every bit as bad as dogmatic religious belief.

Clifford's vision ranged widely over space and time. Of organic life in the universe at large, he says: It is in the last degree improbable that it is confined to our own planet. He would have been fascinated by recent evidence for the existence of planets circling other stars.

Clifford expected that there would be fundamental changes in our understanding of the physical world. He was the translator of, and a strong proponent of, Reimann's mathematical work on curvature of space, and conjectured that physical space was curved, on both large and small scales. He partially anticipated Einstein's General Theory of Relativity in 1870, when he wrote:

I am supposed to know that the three angles of a rectilinear triangle are exactly two right angles. Now suppose that three points are taken in space, distant from one another as the Sun is from Alpha Centauri, and the shortest distances between these points are drawn so as to form a triangle then I do not know that this sum would differ at all from two right angles; but I also do not know that the difference would be less than ten degrees.

Einstein's General Theory of Relativity explained gravitation as curvature of space-time on a large scale. Forty years earlier, Clifford suggested that electric and magnetic forces might be curvature in disguise - but he did not mention gravity. So he missed a trick there!

24 Ethical Record, NovemberlDecember, 2004 Clifford's Amazing Anticipations In Physics In a brief paper to the Cambridge Philosophical Society in 1870 - the paper celebrated at the Princeton gathering - Clifford asserted that the motion of matter was nothing but waves of curvature passing through space. This is rather like waves rippling down a rope when we shake one end. It is still too early to pass judgment on this conjecture. Less prophetic was his fascination with the structure of molecules, which he describes by the very apt simile: at least as complicated as a grand piano. We can only guess at what Clifford might have discovered had he lived a full life. Consider these facts: I. In 1873, Clifford created his 'biquaternion algebra', and in 1876 recognised it as a description of 4-dimensional space. This algebra has turned out to be very closely related to the 'Dirac algebra' of 1927, which Paul Dirac formulated to describe properties of the electron and other elementary particles. While Dirac thought of the algebra mainly in terms of particle theory, it is also the algebra that describes the 4-dimensional space-time of Special Relativity. Clifford was a close associate of Maxwell, who also died in 1879, and he taught Maxwell's electromagnetic theory. This theory was expressed using Hamilton's quaternions, essentially the 3-dimensional forerunner of Clifford algebras. Maxwell's electromagnetic equations show a near-symmetry between time and the three space dimensions. If we try writing Maxwell's equations in terms of Clifford's 4-dimensional 'biquaternion' algebra, reflecting this near-symmetry, a crucial sign has to be changed, giving the Dirac algebra. Then, as I have shown in several undergraduate courses, the resulting Clifford algebraic form of Maxwell's equations automatically and inevitably leads to Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, discovered in 1905. I believe that Maxwell and Clifford, had they not died so young, must have reflected on this formulation, and could well have discovered Special Relativity.

Still more tantalising are some notes that we have found in Clifford's private papers, on a project to unify physical science. It starts: Importance of establishing connections between different branches of scientific enquiry; such steps are of the nature of revolutions in science. After listing a vast range of physical phenomena, the notes end: All of these things must come out of a knowledge of the form of atoms and their relation to the ether. What is pointed to is therefore a connection between kinetic theory and undulatory theory. What connection was he thinking of? Was this an anticipation of the Wave Mechanics of de Broglie and SchrOdinger in the 1920s, unifying particles and waves? We shall never know. What is certain is that William Clifford would not have been surprised at the revolution in fundamental physics brought about by the theories of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. He may well have been a major contributor to both, had he lived.

I have told you something of William Clifford's life and work, and a little about his friendships, There is much more to tell, about his brief marriage to Lucy, their children, their Sunday salons and friendships with many eminent people, and how Lucy continued and built on these friendships, well into the twentieth century. El

Ethical Record, NovemberlDecember; 2004 A BALLADE OF'EVOLUTION Grant Allen Author of Vignettes from Nature (1881)

In the mud of the Cambrian main At length as an ape he was fain Did our earliest ancestor dive : The nuts of the forest to rive ; From a shapeless albuminous grain Till he took to the low-lying plain, We mortals our being derive. And proceeded his fellow to knive. lie could split himself up into five, Thus did cannibal men first arrive, Or roll himself round like a ball: One another to swallow and maul; For the fittest will always survive, And the strongest continued to thrive, While the weakliest go to the wall. While the weakliest went to the wall.

As an active ascidian again ENVOY Fresh forms he began to contrive, Prince, in our civilized hive, Till he grew to a fish with a brain, Now money's the measure of all; And brought forth a mammal alive And the wealthy in coaches can drive, With his rivals he next had to strive, While the needier go to the wall. To woo him a mate and a thrall ; So the handsomest managed to wive, While the ugliest went to the wall.

"[Allen] was greatly esteemed by Huxley and Darwin and his refined character and wealth of culture endeared him to all the advanced thinkers of his day" Joseph McCabe

EDITORIAL- PROFESSOR ASSERTS THAT ATHEISTS ARE ARROGANT

Atheists are not arrogant (as asserted by Prof. Alistair McGrath in the Spectator, 18 September 2004) for seeing no merit, but only contradictions, in the usual depiction of God. Allegedly compassionate, God created pain and permits needless suffering; although knowing all the circumstances that will determine every 'free' human decision, He promises sinners eternal retribution.

The Professor seems to think that parading the villainy of Stalin constitutes a new reason for the existence of God. It does not. Stalin built up the cult of his personality on the Russians' residual religiosity - their primitive faith in the infallibility of a great leader. As for the revival, noted by McGrath, of Islamic and Orthodox piety in the post- communist free-for-all, is this not a nice illustration of religion's role as "the heart of a heartless world, the opium of the people" (K.Marx)? TOWARDS 2100 - IS SOCIALISM THE ANSWER? Stan Parker Based on a lecture to the Ethical Society, 24 October 2004

What will the world be like a century from now? It seems fairly certain that there will be much technological change. Electronic wizardry will surely produce things and experiences we can only dream about (or have nightmares about) today. But will there be other changes that affect our lives and our society? Capitalism, the system that replaced feudalism, is still growing and producing dreadful problems of war, poverty, starvation, environmental degradation and so on. But history shows that no system lasts forever ... 26 Ethical Record, NovemberlDecember, 2004 The question then arises of what will replace capitalism. Various names have been suggested for the new system: socialism, communism, anarchism - even Utopia. And there are even more opinions about the basic principle, let alone the detailed working, of the new society. On balance, I favour socialism as the best label for post-capitalism which doesn't mean I am opposed to much of what advocates of communism, anarchism, etc have to propose.

I think advocates of post-capitalism can agree on several basic principles. The new society will feature a change from private (including state) ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution to common ownership, democratic control of decision-making, production solely for use not for profit, and free access to goods, services and experiences, each determining their own needs in a socially responsible way. SystemChange Capitalism now permeates every nook and cranny of our lives and society and I see socialism as being equally pervasive. But I don't think socialism will completely replace capitalism, although it may well become the dominant world system. For more than fifty years I have believed that the evidence shows that, as each dominant social system is replaced by another, vestiges of the old system remain. In the capitalist world today there are substantial areas of feudal relations, even pockets of slavery.

In my ncw book. Towards 2100: From Capitalism to Socialism, (3rd Edition, 2004) I propose that the change will come later in the current century. While the change may involve 'enactments' of various kinds, it will essentially be a process rather than what has been called 'one fell swoop'. Although the term 'established' has been used to describe the change, I think that a better way of looking at it is that socialism will be built or grown. This is in line with Marx's analogue that the new society will grow within the womb of the old.

The 21st Century In the book I divide the century into six periods. In the first period capitalism continues its ascendancy, maintaining and expanding trends apparent at the end of the 20th century. Then the tide begins to turn, with more widespread but still weak opposition to capitalism. The third period is one of what becomes to be known as the Second Renaissance, an inspirational movement sweeping society. This paves the way for the tremendously exciting take-off period of socialism. But mistakes arc made and there is a counter-revolution. Finally, the capitalist world and the socialist world are more or less reconciled, both being developmental rather than static.

Like many authors, 1 have already started thinking about, and planning for, my next book. I want to complete what I am coming to see as a 'socialist trilogy'. In Stop Supporting Capitalism, Start Building Socialism, I reviewed everything I could find about the pros and cons of the present and possible future world systems. In Tbward 2100 offer one scenario for the 21st century, seeking to show how socialism can be built, or perhaps grown would be better word. To complete the trilogy I want to say more about what can be done today to build the socialist movement, why I think (unlike most of my comrades) that the two systems of socialism and modified capitalism can live together in the same world, and what problems will arise and have to be dealt with as capitalism gets challenged on something like its own terms of powerful and financial support. Ethical Record, NovemberlDecember, 2004 A Sequence for Iraq

When the barbarians entered the city there was little resistance; they were welcomed with waves and kisses as they came in with their tanks and their guns. How could the people resist their gum and their perfect teeth their tanks and their guns?

After twenty-five years of darkness the people were practised in waving; at checkpoints all over the city people exploded in kisses. Bewildered, with only one language the b-b-b-barbarian responds in the words he knows for father, for mother, for child — better he had never been born. * * * * * * * * Brought up to think themselves good — they are the US cavalry the ones who ride in in white hats whose mission is the fixing of broken things — they expect to be welcomed and loved, find it hard to be bombing children on a diet of ashes and sand.

The leaders admit it's untidy — redemption comes at a price. Out on a faraway hillside a shepherd girl dies with her sheep. The leaders are partial to prayer: their words rise upwards like smoke but the lamb is wood in their mouths. From The Lion in the Forest byKathleen McPhilemy Published by KATABASIS 10 St Martin's Close, London NW1 OHR www.katabasis.co.uk ISBN 0 904872 40 8 £7.95

ATHEIST? SECULARIST? HUMANIST? SCEPTIC? FREETHINKER? RATIONALIST? AGNOSTIC? BRIGHT? NOT SURE? Want to be part of the fastest growing global movement for people with naturalistic worldviews? Or maybe you're just doubting religion and want to know more about alternative ideas and philosophies? If the answer is 'yes' then we'd like to hear from you. To get involved contact: Keith on [email protected] To find out more about the Brights visit

www.the- brights.net

28 Ethical Record, NovemberlDecember, 2004 VIEWPOINTS

The Modern Unitarian SPES members would often ask me when they learn that, just like Moncure Conway,* I am a Unitarian, "What is Unitarianism?" Perhaps the following letter from an American Unitarian to her church's newsletter might throw some light on this:- *In his early days [ Ed.]

I am the Model of a Modern Unitarian

I am the very model of a modern Unitarian, I'm not a Catholic, Buddhist, Hindu, Jew or Presbyterian. I know the world's religions and can cite their roots historical From Moses up to Channing, all in order categorical. I'm very well acquainted too with theories theological, On existential questions I am almost wholly logical, About most any question I am teeming with a lot of views, With many fine ideas that would fill a church's empty pews. I quote from Freud and Jung and all those experts psychological, I'm anti-nuke, I don't pollute, I'm chastely ecological. In short in matters spiritual, ethical, material, I am the very model of today's religious liberal. (In short in matters spiritual, ethical, material, I am the very model of today's religious liberal.)

I use the latest language: God is never Father, never Lord, But Ground of Being, Source of Life, or almost any other word. I never pray, I meditate, I'm leery about worshipping, I sit on ten committees, none of which accomplish anything. I give to worthy causes, and I drive a gas-preserving car; I have good UU principles, although I'm not sure what they are. I'm open to opinions of profound and broad variety, Unless they're too conservative and smack of religious piety. I formulate agendas and discuss them with the best of them, But don't ask me to implement — I leave it to the rest of em. In short in matters spiritual, ethical, material, I am the very model of today's religious liberal. (In short in matters spiritual, ethical, material, I am the very model of today's religious liberal.) Revised from W S Gilbert by Beth McGregor Stephen Szanto - Woodford, Essex.

"Mental Violence" In Cartoons Independently of Ben Roston's letter in the October ER, I formed the same opinion and think that these cartoons are counterproductive. Some of your members will be refugees and will have seen the Nazi caricatures of Jews under Hitler's regime and these cartoons are a reminder. I think a cartoon message should be instant and one should not have to look for it as one has to in those cartoons that Martin Rowson does. I thought that Donald Rooum was a good cartoonist. Why not have some of his? Ethical Record, NovemberlDecember, 2004 29 I enclose a cartoon from the Greater London Pensioner. It is simple and makes the point that post offices are disappearing. The text says " you are here - your nearest post office is now off the map".

Dorothy Forsyth - London NW3

Mental Violence Doesn't Hurt Sticks and stones may break my bones, but mental violence never hurt anybody. To suppress Martin Rowson's deliciously insulting cartoons, as Ben Roston advocates, would be to suppress free speech in the name of free speech. Donald Rooum - London, El.

Richard Hall (Obituary in October ER.) First the good news. I loved the cartoon from The Times by Martin Rowson (reproduced in the centre spread of the Record): it will adorn my fridge very shortly!

Now for the bad news. I was surprised and exceedingly sorry to learn of the death of my old London Young Humanists friend, Richard Hall - at the untimely age of 62. Alex Hill wrote a very good tribute, and I am pleased that Richard's funeral was at Golders Green Crematorium, a sort of Valhalla for England's most famous freethinkers over the decades! Barbara Smoker would, I am sure, have been a very appropriate officiant.

Almost all my memories of L.Y.H. are very pleasant ones, and Richard is one of the members I will always remember. Eccentric, highly intelligent and very knowledgeable, he invariably arrived at meetings and social functions with a rucksack heavily laden with books. I cannot remember his ever saying anything mean, unkind or rude. Nigel Sinnott - Australia

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

30 Ethical Record, NovemberlDecember, 2004 BRYAN RONALD WILSON (1926-2004)

Bryan Ronald Wilson has died aged 78 from Parkinson's Disease. He was one of the world's leading sociologists of religion whose works on secularisation and religious sects have become classics. In November 1996 he became the 71st Conway Memorial Lecturer with a title of 'The Secularization Question: Is Religion Losing Its Social Significance?' [his "z"

After national service and a first in economics at London University, Wilson studied at the London School of Economics for his PhD on Christadelphians, Elim Pentacostals and Christian Scientists. The thesis was expanded into what became a standard work, Sects and Society (1961). This book and associated articles set new standards for historical and theological understanding of sectarian movements and their development. He worked as Lecturer in Oxford as Reader in Sociology and then Fellow of All Souls. He edited 7 volumes on sectarianism, rationality, education, new religious movements, values and Soka Gakkai Buddhism.

It was Wilson's Religion in Secular Society (1966) that laid the foundation for his international renown for the view that long term processes of modernisation and rationalisation had eroded the capacity of religion to shape human societies. It was for this thesis that he was principally invited to give the 71st Conway Lecture*. His chairman that evening was Prof Gerald Vinten, SPES lecturer and Holding Trustee who, in his introduction to the lecture, says he had not met Wilson since he was a postgraduate student at Balliol College Oxford. They had previously met at the University of Leeds where Gerald was studying. They had an interest in common in noting the business ethic or lack or it as some religions amass large fortunes.

A life-long bachelor, Wilson was also noted at Oxford for his impeccable taste, erudition and elegant prose style, not to mention his willingness to impart a peerless knowledge of fine claret to Oxford high tables. He died on a trip to the Cotswolds of a heart attack after enjoying a pub supper.

(Compiled by Jennifer Jeynes with acknowledgment to the Daily Telegraph)

*copies available from SPES price £2.

SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY Reg. Charity No. 251396 Founded in 1793, the Society is a progressive movement whose aims are: 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 the 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 .£18 (112 if a full-time student, unwaged or over 65).

Ethical Record, NovemberlDecember, 2004 3 1 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

DECEMBER 2004 Sunday 5 1100 FLOWERS, ENCYCLOPAEDIAS & A VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD: Bougainville, Diderot and the Noble Savage. Emma Cashdan

1500 A ROUGH GUIDE TO A FUTURE WITHOUT GLOBAL CAPITALISM Corinna Lutz and Paul Feldman introduce the arguments in their new book, A World to Win (Lupus Books)

Sunday 12 1100 THE EVENTS OF 9/11: Challenging the Official Conspiracy Theory Jay Ginn Visiting Professor, University of Surrey

1500 ONE DIMENSIONAL HUMANS: Herbert Marcuse's Critique of Modern Industrial Society. Peter Vlachos

Sunday 19 1430 YULETIDE CELEBRATION Master of Ceremonies: Terry Mullins KING ARTHUR: A Playlet by John Rayner Entertainment, Quiz, Grand Refreshments, £2 50 All welcome

JANUARY 2005 Sunday 9 1100 THE ROLE OF THE VATICAN IN THE RWANDA MASSACRES Linda Melvern, noted commentator

1500 THE CAREER OF SALVADOR DALI brought to life by Alberto Bona

Friday 14 1930 CELEBRATORY CONCERT IN MEMORY OF MIRIAM ELTON The Chilingirian String Quartet with Raphael Wallfisch (cello) Admission .E12 (Conc. £9) at the door. Jointly with LCMS. For your Diary HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY 1930 Thursday 27 January 2005 in the Brockway Room (ground floor) Launch of Exodus to Humanism: Jewish Identity Without Religion by David Ibry It is hoped several of the contributors will take part.

SOUTH PLACE SUNDAY CONCERTS AT CONWAY HALL (by LCMS) 6.30pm. Tickets £7. For programme details Tel: 020 7483 2450.

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