ABSTRACT
For Russell has followed the prescription of that ancient philosopher who was also a socialist, and who declared that in the ideal state the philosophers must leave the upper realm of ideas, and must descend “to the general underground abode and get the habit of seeing in the dark.” Russell’s first pronouncement on a social question occurred in 1896, when at the age of twenty-four he delivered and published a series of lectures on German social democracy. The roads that promised freedom were socialism, anarchism, and syndicalism. One may observe in passing that the American publishers, with that intellectual timidity which characterizes this continent, changed the title to Proposed Roads to Freedom. The social synthesis which Russell achieves is not so much a synthesis of the objective facts as a blending of his own hopes and fears, of his likes and dislikes, within which we vainly seek for either assurance or direction.
