METAMORPHOSES OF SCEPTICISM 



ethics and politics proved to be the cement necessary for the unification 

 of the divergent forms of experience. The dividing process was 

 succeeded by a uniting one, and an integrated world-view emerged 

 from the differentiated dissected analysed system which I had made. 

 It was bound to follow the lead of the philosophy which most con- 

 sistently allows for the social background of our thought and being, 

 and explains what is happening, and has for centuries been happening, 

 to human society as the continuation of all biological evolution. 



Perhaps it will not be a digression if at this point I lighten the way 

 by a few autobiographical notes. I tried to keep to my own field, but 

 politics would keep breaking in. I grew up in an extremely bourgeois 

 household, my father a physician (before my time, an anatomist and 

 pioneer in pathological histology) in private practice but later to be a 

 specialist in anaesthesia; my mother a musician and composer. My 

 father was, I believe, an extremely kind man in his practice, among 

 which there were many working-class people, but the atmosphere of 

 my home was saturated with every kind of bourgeois prejudice. I 

 remember with affection, however, an incident which was the first to 

 make me realise the community of flesh and blood which I had with 

 working-class people, who otherwise one might have been tempted to 

 suppose were an entirely different species of living organism. It was 

 at the little French town of Eu, where I (then about thirteen) was 

 travelling with my father on holiday, and as there was no "corre- 

 spondance" of trains, we had*to stay the night. The hotel was full, so 

 we were accommodated in a neighbouring railwayman's cottage, the 

 simple homely welcome of whose family I never forgot. Such little 

 incidents have untold consequences, and about 19 17 in walks with 

 my father I would always argue in favour of socialism against his 

 incurably pessimistic views of human nature, so well suited to the 

 retention of power and privilege by the class which at any given time 

 possesses it. 



I remember, too, the first mention I ever heard of bolshevism. I 

 was on my bicycle, while my best school friend, F — . C — . (later 

 Professor of Architecture at M'Gill University) walked along beside 

 me. It was the summer of 19 18. We had roving minds; he did a good 

 deal of sculpture, and we corresponded in a variety of codes, in 

 Leonardo's mirror-writing, and so on. He was saying, "The point 

 about bolshevism is, that so far, every ruling class has oppressed 

 everybody else, so now the idea is to take the very dregs of the 

 population and make them the ruling class, so that they can take a 



II 



