Covering the topics of God, immortality, conscience and immortality, this volume presents a selection of essays of the first decade of Russell as an independent thinker. It includes his graduate essays, adolescent writings and ideas on ethics, Bacon, Hobbes and DesCartes, psychology and politics.

`The first volume contains a great deal of varied and interesting writing from Russell's first decade as an independent thinker ... the great themes of God and freewill, immortality and conscience are rehearsed with charm and penetration ... Russell shows an exuberant delight in ingenious reasoning, expressed in the fewest possible words and in the least encumbered way, that was to remain with him as a kind of trademark.' - Anthony Quinton, The Times