All this, however, was more than made up by the powerful ally who soon
came to his aid. Mr. Bertrand Russell began by adopting Mr. Moore's
metaphysics, but he has given as much as he has received. Apart from
his well-known mathematical attainments, he possesses by inheritance
the political and historical mind, and an intrepid determination to
pierce convention and look to ultimate things. He has written
abundantly and, where the subject permits, with a singular lucidity,
candour, and charm. Especially his _Philosophical Essays_ and his
little book on _The Problems of Philosophy_ can be read with pleasure
by any intelligent person, and give a tolerably rounded picture of the
tenets of the school. Yet it must be remembered that Mr. Russell, like
Mr. Moore, is still young and his thoughts have not assumed their
ultimate form. Moreover, he lives in an atmosphere of academic
disputation which makes one technical point after another acquire a
preponderating influence in his thoughts. His book on _The Problems
of Philosophy_ is admirable in style, temper, and insight, but it
hardly deserves its title; it treats principally, in a somewhat
personal and partial way, of the relation of knowledge to its objects,
and it might rather have been called "The problems which Moore and I
have been agitating lately." Indeed, his philosophy is so little
settled as yet that every new article and every fresh conversation
revokes some of his former opinions, and places the crux of
philosophical controversy at a new point. We are soon made aware that
exact thinking and true thinking are not synonymous, but that one
exact thought, in the same mind, may be the exact opposite of the
next. This inconstancy, which after all does not go very deep, is a
sign of sincerity and pure love of truth; it marks the freshness, the
vivacity, the self-forgetfulness, the logical ardour belonging to this
delightful reformer. It may seem a paradox, but at bottom it is not,
that the vitalists should be oppressed, womanish, and mystical, and