ABSTRACT
Russell’s interest in philosophical problems began early. In his Autobiography (A) he recounts how, at the age of eleven (and thus in 1883 or 1884) his brother introduced him to Euclid: ‘This was one of the great events of my life, as dazzling as first love’ (A I 36). The future author of The Principles of Mathematics (PofM) demanded to know what grounds there were for accepting Euclid’s axioms, and received the unsatisfying reply, ‘If you don’t accept them, we cannot go on.’ ‘The doubt as to the premises of mathematics which I felt at that moment remained with me, and determined the course of my subsequent work’ (A I 36). He even claims that only his desire to know more mathematics prevented him from committing suicide while a schoolboy (A I 43); but it is possible that this retrospective explanation of his survival is unduly romantic (cf. A I 55, where he attributes it to concern for his people).
