Bertrand Russell, by John Watling, 1. Biography 冒頭部分
Source: Bertrand Russell, by John Watling (Edinburgh; Oliver & Boyd, 1970. 119 p. 19 cm. Writers and critics ser.)* Note: This book was in the press when Russell died on 2 February 1970 at the age of 97.
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Bertrand Russell was born in 1872. His mother died only two years afterwards, and his father a year and a half after that. His parents held advanced opinions on matters of social reform. They supported universal suffrage(普通選挙権) and rejected the view that birth-control was immoral, and they were actively engaged in discussing and furthering these views. They were acquainted with some of the leading progressive thinkers of the time, including John Stuart Mill. His father's will left both Russell and his brother in the care of two men-one of them had been tutor to his brother-who were both atheists. Russell's paternal grandparents did not share his parents' progressive views. They had little difficulty in obtaining custody of the children, and Russell was brought up by his grandmother, for his grandfather died a few years later. This grandfather, Lord John Russell, was eighty-three when Russell's father died. He had been Prime Minister during two Liberal administrations, and before he became Prime Minister had introduced the First Reform Bill. He and his wife lived in Pembroke Lodge, a grace-and-favour house in Richmond Park. There are still such houses in Richmond Park, but Pembroke Lodge and its gardens are now open to the public. Russell spent his childhood in this house where his grandparents were visited by many eminent people, chiefly from political life. He was not sent to school until he was sixteen, when he went to an army crammer to prepare for a Cambridge scholarship. In his later childhood he was intensely interested in mathematics, as well as in history and poetry. When he was eighteen, he sat the scholarship examination for Trinity College, Cambridge, gained a scholarship, and went up to Trinity a year later. Before going up he read J. S. Mill's Autobiography, Political Economy, and A System of Logic, Herbert Spencer's The Man Versus the State, and some works of Henry George. ...