Chapter 12
When I left Dora, she continued the school until after the beginning of the Second War, though after 1934 it was no longer at Telegraph House, John and Kate were made wards in Chancery and were sent to Dartington school where they were very happy.
I spent a summer at Hendaye and for part of another summer took the Gerald Brenans' house near Malaga. I had not known either of the Brenans before this and I found them interesting and delightful. Gamel Brenan surprised me by turning out to be a scholar of great erudition and wide interests, full of all sorts of scraps of out-of-the-way knowledge and a poet of haunting and learned rhythms. We have kept up our friendship and she visits us sometimes - a lovely autumnal person.
I spent the summer of 1932 at Cam Voel, which I later gave to Dora. While there, I wrote Education and the Social Order. After this, having no longer the financial burden of the school, I gave up writing potboilers. And having failed as a parent, I found that my ambition to write books that might be important revived.
During my lecture tour in America in 1931,I had contracted with W. W. Norton, the publisher, to write the book which was published in 1934 under the title Freedom and Organization, 1814-1914.I worked at this book in collaboration with Patricia Spence, commonly known as Peter Spence, first at a flat in Emperor's Gate (where John and Kate were disappointed to find neither an Emperor nor a gate), and then at Deudraeth Castle in North Wales, which was at that time an annex of Portmeirion Hotel. I very much enjoyed this work, and I found the life at Portmeirion pleasant. The hotel was owned by my friends Clough Williams-Ellis, the architect, and his wife, Amabel, the writer, whose company was delightful.
When the writing of Freedom and Organization was finished, I decided to return to Telegraph House and tell Dora she must live elsewhere. My reasons were financial. I was under a legal obligation to pay a rent of £400 a year for Telegraph House, the proceeds being due to my brother's second wife as alimony. I was also obliged to pay alimony to Dora, as well as all the expenses of John and Kate. Meanwhile my income had diminished catastrophically. This was due partly to the depression, which caused people to buy much fewer books, partly to the fact that I was no longer writing popular books, and partly to my having refused to stay with Hearst in 1931 at his castle in California. My weekly articles in the Hearst newspapers had brought me £1000 a year, but after my refusal the pay was halved, and very soon I was told the articles were no longer required. Telegraph House was large, and was only approachable by two private drives, each about a mile long. I wished to sell it, but could not put it on the market while the school was there. The only hope was to live there, and try to make it attractive to possible purchasers.
After settling again at Telegraph House, without the school, I went for a holiday to the Canary Islands. On returning, I found myself, though sane, quite devoid of creative impulse, and at a loss to know what work to do. For about two months, purely to afford myself distraction, I worked on the problem of the twenty-seven straight lines on a cubic surface. But this would never do, as it was totally useless and I was living on capital saved during the successful years that ended in 1932.I decided to write a book on the daily increasing menace of war. I called this book Which Way to Peace? and maintained in it the pacifist position that I had taken up during the First War. I did, it is true, make an exception: I held that, if ever a world government were established, it would be desirable to support it by force against rebels. But as regards the war to be feared in the immediate future, I urged conscientious objection.
This attitude, however, had become unconsciously insincere. I had been able to view with reluctant acquiescence the possibility of the supremacy of the Kaiser's Germany; I thought that, although this would be an evil, it would not be so great an evil as a world war and its aftermath. But Hitler's Germany was a different matter, I found the Nazis utterly revolting - cruel, bigoted, and stupid. Morally and intellectually they were alike odious to me. Although I clung to my pacifist convictions, I did so with increasing difficulty. When, in 1940, England was threatened with invasion, I realised that, throughout the First War, I had never seriously envisaged the possibility of utter defeat. I found this possibility unbearable, and at last consciously and definitely decided that I must support what was necessary for victory in the Second War, however difficult victory might be to achieve, and however painful in its consequences.
This was the last stage In the slow abandonment of many of the beliefs that had come to me in the moment of 'conversion' in 1901.I had never been a complete adherent of the doctrine of non-resistance; I had always recognised the necessity of the police and the criminal law, and even during the First War I had maintained publicly that some wars are justifiable. But I had allowed a larger sphere to the method of non-resistance - or, rather, non-violent resistance - than later experience seemed to warrant. It certainly has an important sphere; as against the British in India, Gandhi led it to triumph. But it depends upon the existence of certain virtues in those against whom it is employed. When Indians lay down on railways, and challenged the authorities to crush them under trains, the British found such cruelty intolerable. But the Nazis had no scruples in analogous situations. The doctrine which Tolstoy preached with great persuasive force, that the holders of power could be morally regenerated if met by non-resistance, was obviously untrue in Germany after 1933. Clearly Tolstoy was right only when the holders of power were not ruthless beyond a point, and clearly the Nazis went beyond this point.
But private experience bad almost as much to do with changing my beliefs as had the state of the world. In the school, I found a very definite and forceful exercise of authority necessary if the weak were not to be oppressed. Such instances as the hatpin in the soup could not be left to the slow operation of a good environment, since the need for action was immediate and imperative. In my second marriage, I had tried to preserve that respect for my wife's liberty which I thought that my creed enjoined. I found, however, that my capacity for forgiveness end what may be called Christian love was not equal to the demands that I was making on it, and that persistence in a hopeless endeavour would do much harm to me, while not achieving the intended good to others. Anybody else could have told me this in advance, but I was blinded by theory.
I do not wish to exaggerate. The gradual change in my views, from 1932 to 1940, was not a revolution; it was only a quantitative change and a shift of emphasis. I had never held the non-resistance creed absolutely, and I did not now reject it absolutely. But the practical difference, between opposing the First War and supporting the Second, was so great as to mask the considerable degree of theoretical consistency that in fact existed.
Although my reason was wholly convinced, my emotions followed with reluctance. My whole nature had been involved in my opposition to the First War, whereas it was a divided self that favoured the Second, I have never since 1940 recovered the same degree of unity between opinion and emotion as I had possessed from 1914 to 1918. I think that, in permitting myself that unity, I had allowed myself more of a creed than scientific intelligence can justify. To follow scientific intelligence wherever it may lead me had always seemed to me the most imperative of moral precepts for me, and I have followed this precept even when it has involved a loss of what I myself had taken for deep spiritual insight.
About a year and a half was spent by Peter Spence, with whom for some time I had been in love, and me on The Amberley Papers, a record of the brief life of my parents. There was something of the ivory tower in this work. My parents had not been faced with our modern problems; their radicalism was confident, and throughout their lives the world was moving in directions that to them seemed good. And although they opposed aristocratic privilege, it survived intact, and they, however involuntarily, profited by it. They lived in a comfortable, spacious, hopeful world, yet in spite of this I could wholly approve of them. This was restful, and in raising a monument to them my feelings of filial piety were assuaged. But I could not pretend that the work was really important. I had had a period of uncreative barrenness, but it had ended, and it was time to turn to something less remote.
My next piece of work was Power, a new social analysis. In this book I maintained that a sphere of freedom is still desirable even in a socialist state, but this sphere has to be defined afresh and not in liberal terms. This doctrine I still hold. The thesis of this book seems to me important, and I hoped that it would attract more attention than it has done. It was intended as a refutation both of Marx and of the classical economists, not on a point of detail, but on the fundamental assumptions that they shared. I argued that power, rather than wealth, should be the basic concept in social theory, and that social justice should consist in equalisation of power to the greatest practicable degree. It followed that State ownership of land and capital was no advance unless the State was democratic, and even then only if methods were devised for curbing the power of officials. A part of my thesis was taken up and popularised in Burnham's Managerial Revolution, but otherwise the book fell rather flat. I still hold, however, that what it has to say is of very great importance if the evils of totalitarianism are to be avoided, particularly under a Socialist regime.
In 1936, I married Peter Spence and my youngest child, Conrad, was born in 1937. This was a great happiness. A few months after his birth, I at last succeeded in selling Telegraph House. For years I had had no offers, but suddenly I had two: one from a Polish Prince, the other from an English business man. In twenty-four hours, owing to their competition, I succeeded in increasing the price they offered by £1000. At last the business man won, and I was rid of the incubus, which had been threatening me with ruin since I had to spend capital so long as it was not disposed of, and very little capital remained.
Although, for financial reasons, I had to be glad to be rid of Telegraph House, the parting was painful. I loved the downs and the woods and my tower room with its views in all four directions. I had known the place for forty years or more, and had watched it grow in my brother's day. It represented continuity; of which, apart from work, my life has had far less than I could have wished. When I sold it, I could say, like the apothecary, 'my poverty but not my will consents'. For a long time after this I did not have a fixed abode, and thought it not likely that I should ever have one. I regretted this profoundly.
After I had finished Power, I found my thoughts turning again to theoretical philosophy. During my time in prison in 1918, I had become interested in the problems connected with meaning, which in earlier days I had completely ignored. I wrote something on these problems in The Analysis of Mind and in various articles written at about the same time. But there was a great deal more to say. The logical positivists, with whose general outlook I had a large measure of agreement, seemed to me on some points to be falling into errors which would lead away from empiricism into a new scholasticism. They seemed inclined to treat the realm of language as if it were self-subsistent, and not in need of any relation to non-linguistic occurrences. Being invited to give a course of lectures at Oxford, I chose as my subject 'Words and Facts'. The lectures were the first draft of the book published in 1940 under the title An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth.
We bought a house at Kidlington, near Oxford, and lived there for about a year, but only one Oxford lady called. We were not respectable. We had later a similar experience in Cambridge. In this respect I have found these ancient seats of learning unique.
Letters
To Maurice Amos
16th June 1930
Dear Maurice
You wrote me a very nice letter last October and I have not answered it yet. When you wrote it I was touring America, which leaves one no leisure for anything beyond the day's work. I meant to answer your letter, but as the right moment went by, the impulse died.
I like Jeans's book. It is amusing how the physicists have come round to poor old Bishop Berkeley. You remember how when we were young we were taught that although idealism was, of course, quite the thing, Bishop Berkeley's form of it was rather silly; now it is the only form that survives. I do not see how to refute it, though temperamentally I find it repulsive. It ought, of course, in any case to be solipsism. I lectured on this subject at Harvard, with Whitehead In the Chair, and I said it seemed to me improbable that I had composed the parts of his books which I could not understand, as I should be compelled to believe if I were a solipsist. Nevertheless I have never succeeded in finding any real evidence that I did not do so.
I am very much interested in what you say about your book on the British Constitution, and especially amused that you had written 46,000 out of the 50,000 requisite words before you reached Parliament. Parliament has become a somewhat unimportant body. In the 19th century the Prime Ministers resigned when defeated in Parliament until Gladstone altered the practice; now by the threat of dissolution they terrorise Parliament. The Constitution would not be appreciably changed if the Prime Minister were directly elected, selected the Government, and had to seek re-election either after five years or when a leader appeared against him in his own Party Press.
I think you arc entirely right in what you say about the Labour Party. I do not like them, but an Englishman has to have a Party just as he has to have trousers, and of the three Parties I find them the least painful. My objection to the Tories is temperamental, and my objection to the Liberals is Lloyd George. I do not think that in joining a Party one necessarily abrogates the use of one's reason. I know that my trousers might be better than they are; nevertheless they seem to me better than none.
It is true that I had never heard of Holdsworth's History of English Law, but in fact I have never read any books at all about law except one or two of Maitland's.
Since I returned from America I have been very much tied here, but I expect to be in London occasionally during the autumn and I should very much like to see you then.
Sanger's death was a great grief to me.
Ever yours affectionately Bertrand Russell
From and to Bronislaw Malinowski, the anthropologist
The London School of Economics 13th November 1930
Dear Russell
On the occasion of my visit to your School I left my only presentable brown hat in your anteroom. I wonder whether since then it has had the privilege of enclosing the only brains in England which I ungrudgingly regard as better than mine; or whether it has been utilised in some of the juvenile experimentations in physics, technology, dramatic art, or prehistoric symbolism; or whether it naturally lapsed out of the anteroom.
If none of these events, or shall we rather call them hypotheses, holds good or took place, could you be so good as to bring it In a brown paper parcel or by some other concealed mode of transport to London and advise me on a post card where I could reclaim it? I am very sorry that my absentmindedness, which is a characteristic of high intelligence, has exposed you to all the inconvenience incidental to the event.
I do hope to see you some time soon.
Yours sincerely B. Malinowski
15th Nov. 1930
Dear Malinowski
My secretary has found a presentable brown hat In my lobby which I presume is yours, indeed the mere sight of it reminds me of you.
I am going to the School of Economics to give a lecture to thee Students' Union on Monday (17th), and unless my memory is as bad and my intelligence as good as yours, I will leave your hat with the porter at the School of Economics, telling him to give it to you on demand.
I too hope that we may meet some tune soon, I made the acquaintance of Briffault1 the other day, and was amazed by his pugnacity.
1 Briffault was a general practitioner from New Zealand who ventured into sociology, and for whose book Sin and Sex I did an introduction in 1931.
Yours sincerely Bertrand Russell
From and to G. E. Moore
86, Chesterton Road Cambridge Mar. 9/30
Dear Russell
The Council of Trinity made a grant to Wittgenstein last June to enable him to carry on his researches on the foundations of Mathematics. There is now a question of making him a further grant; & they wish, before they decide, to have expert reports on the work he has done since the last grant was made. They have authorised me to ask you to make such a report for them. I'm afraid it will involve a good deal of trouble. Wittgenstein has written a great deal; but he says it would be absolutely necessary for him to explain it to you in conversation, if you are to understand it. I think he would be very glad to have an opportunity of doing this, but it would no doubt take up a good deal of your time. I hope very much that you will nevertheless be willing to do it; for there seems to be no other way of ensuring him a sufficient income to continue his work, unless the Council do make him a grant; and I am afraid there is very little chance that they will do so, unless they can get favourable reports from experts in the subject; and you are, of course, by far the most competent person to make one. They would, of course, pay a fee for the report.
There would be no need for you to come here to see Wittgenstein. He would arrange to go to see you, when & where it suited you best.
Yours fraternally G. E. Moore
Beacon Hill School Harting, Petersfield nth March 1930
Dear Moore
I do not see how I can refuse to read Wittgenstein's work and make a report on it. At the same time, since it involves arguing with him, you are right that it will require a great deal of work. I do not know anything more fatiguing than disagreeing with him in an argument.
Obviously the best plan for me would be to read the manuscript carefully first, and see him afterwards. How soon could you let me have his stuff? I should like if possible to see him here before the 5th of April: on that date I shall be going to Cornwall for Easter, and I do not want to have any work to do while there, as I have been continuously very busy since the end of last summer. I do not know how long it will be necessary to argue with him. I could spare three days, say the Friday, Saturday and Sunday preceding April 5th, but it would be difficult for me to spare more. Do you think this would be enough?
Yours fraternally Bertrand Russell
86, Chesterton Road Cambridge March 13/30
Dear Russell
Wittgenstein says that he has nothing written which it would be worth while to let you see: all that he has written is at present in too confused a state. I am sorry that I had not clearly understood this when I wrote to you before. What he wants is merely to have a chance of explaining to you some of the results which he has arrived at, so that you might be able to report to the Council whether, even if you thought them mistaken, you thought them important & such that he ought to be given a chance of going on working on the same lines; and I hope that a report of this kind would be sufficient for the Council. And I should think 3 days would be ample for this, & that it wouldn't be necessary for you to argue with him much. He is wiring to you now to ask if he could see you on Saturday either at Harting or in London (if you should be there), so as to try to make some arrangement with you. I think he will be in Austria on April 5th.
Yours fraternally G. E. Moore
17th March 1930
Dear Moore
Wittgenstein has been here for the weekend and we have talked as much as there was time for.
I should be glad to know what is the latest date for reporting to the Council, since my impressions at the moment are rather vague, and he intends while in Austria to make a synopsis of his work which would make it much easier for me to report adequately. If it is impossible to wait another month or so, I will do my best to draw up a report on the basis of our conversations, but I hope this is not necessary. He intends to visit me again in Cornwall just before the beginning of the May term, with his synopsis.
Yours fraternally Bertrand Russell
5th May 1930
Dear Moore
I had a second visit from Wittgenstein, but it only lasted thirty-six hours, and it did not by any means suffice for him to give me a synopsis of all that he has done. He left me a large quantity of typescript, which I am to forward to Littlewood as soon as I have read it. Unfortunately I have been ill and have therefore been unable to get on with it as fast as I hoped. I think, however, that in the course of conversation with him I got a fairly good idea of what he is at. He uses the words 'space' and 'grammar' in peculiar senses, which are more or less connected with each other. He holds that if it is significant to say 'This is red', it cannot be significant to say This is loud'. There is one 'space' of colours and another 'space' of sounds. These 'spaces' are apparently given a priori in the Kantian sense, or at least not perhaps exactly that, but something not so very different. Mistakes of grammar result from confusing 'spaces'. Then he has a lot of stuff about infinity, which is always in danger of becoming what Brouwer has said, and has to be pulled up short whenever this danger becomes apparent. His theories are certainly important and certainly very original. Whether they are true, I do not know; I devoutly hope they are not, as they make mathematics and logic almost incredibly difficult. One might define a 'space', as he uses the word, as a complete set of possibilities of a given kind. If you can say 'This is blue', there are a number of other things you can say significantly, namely, all the other colours.
I am quite sure that Wittgenstein ought to be given an opportunity to pursue his work. Would you mind telling me whether this letter could possibly suffice for the Council? The reason I ask is that I have at the moment so much to do that the effort involved in reading Wittgenstein's stuff thoroughly is almost more than I can face. I will, however, push on with it if you think it is really necessary.
Yours fraternally Bertrand Russell
86, Chesterton Road Cambridge May 7/30
Dear Russell
I don't think your letter to me, as it stands, will quite do as a report to the Council; but I don't think it is necessary that you should spend any more time in reading Wittgenstein's synopsis. What I think is important is that you should write a formal report (which they might, perhaps, want to keep in their Report-Book), not necessarily any longer than your letter, but stating quite clearly & expressly some things which are only implicit in your letter. I think the report should state quite clearly just how much you have been able to do by way of discovering what work W. has been doing since last June, i.e. partly reading of the Synopsis & partly W.'s verbal explanations; and should emphasise that your opinion of its importance, & that W. ought certainly to be given an opportunity of continuing it, is based upon what you have been able to learn of the nature of this new work itself, & not merely on your previous knowledge of W. You see the Council already know that you have a very high opinion of W.'s work in general, and what they want is your opinion as to the importance of this particular new work, not merely based on a presumption that anything W. does is likely to be important. I think you should try to state, very briefly, what its nature is & what its originality & importance consists in.
I'm afraid that to write such a report will be troublesome; but I hope it wouldn't take you very long; and I do think it's important that It should be done.
Yours fraternally G. E. Moore
Beacon Hill School Harting, Petersfield 8th May 1930
Dear Moore
I have just sent Wittgenstein's typescript to Littlewood with a formal report which he can pass on to the Council. It says just the same things as my letter to you, but it says them in grander language, which the Council will be able to understand. I enclose a copy.
I find I can only understand Wittgenstein when I am in good health, which I am not at the present moment.
Yours fraternally Bertrand Russell
My report to the Council of Trinity on Wittgenstein's work:
Beacon Hill School Harting Petersfield 8th May 1930
Owing to illness I have been prevented from studying Wittgenstein's recent work as thoroughly as I had intended to do. I spent five days in discussion with him, while he explained his ideas, and he left with me a bulky typescript, Philosophische Bemerkungen, of which I have read about a third. .The typescript, which consists merely of rough notes, would have been very difficult to understand without the help of the conversations. As it is, however, I believe that the following represents at least a part of the ideas which are new since the time of his Tractatus:
nccording to Wittgenstein, when anything is the case there are certain other things that might have been the case in regard, so to speak, to that particular region of fact. Suppose, for example, a certain patch of wall is blue; it might have been red, or green, or &c. To say that it is any of these colours is false, but not meaningless. On the other hand, to say that it is loud, or shrill, or to apply to it any other adjective appropriate to a sound, would be to talk nonsense. There is thus a collection of possibilities of a certain kind which is concerned in any feet. Such a collection of possibilities Wittgenstein calls a 'space'. Thus there is a 'space' of colours, and a 'space' of sounds. There are various relations among colours which constitute the geometry of that 'space'. All this is, in one sense, independent of experience: that is to say, we need the kind of experience through which we know what 'green' is, but not the kind through which we know that a certain patch of wall is green. Wittgenstein uses the word 'grammar' to cover what corresponds in language to the existence of these various 'spaces'. Wherever a word denoting a region in a certain 'space' occurs, the word denoting another region in that 'space' can be substituted without producing nonsense, but a word denoting any region belonging to any other 'space' cannot be substituted without bad grammar, i.e. nonsense.
A considerable part of Wittgenstein's work is concerned with the interpretation of mathematics. He considers it false to say that mathematics is logic or consists of tautologies. He discusses 'infinity' at considerable length and links it with the conception of possibility that he has developed in connection with his various 'spaces'. He believes in 'infinite possibility', as he calls it, but not in actual 'infinite classes' or 'infinite series'. What he says about infinity tends, obviously against his will, to have a certain resemblance to what has been said by Brouwer. I think perhaps the resemblance is not so close as it appears at first sight. There is much discussion of mathematical induction.
The theories contained in this new work of Wittgenstein's are novel, very original, and indubitably important. Whether they are true, I do not know. As a logician who likes simplicity, I should wish to think that they are not, but from what I have read of them I am quite sure that he ought to have an opportunity to work them out, since when completed they may easily prove to constitute a whole new philosophy.
Bertrand Russell
To W. W. Nortor), publisher
27th Jan. 1931
Dear Norton
Thank you for your letter of January 14th . . .
With regard to The Meaning of Science, I have an abstract of it and have done some 10,000 words. I am afraid I could not do the sort of conclusion that you suggest. I do not believe that science per se is an adequate source of happiness, nor do I think that my own scientific outlook has contributed very greatly to my own happiness, which I attribute to defecating twice a day with unfailing regularity. Science in itself appears to me neutral, that is to say, it increases men's power whether for good or for evil. An appreciation of the ends of life is something that must be superadded to science if it is to bring happiness. I do not wish, in any case, to discuss individual happiness, but only the kind of society to which science is apt to give rise. I am afraid you may be disappointed that I am not more of an apostle of science, but as I grow older, and no doubt as a result of the decay of my tissues, I begin to see the good life more and more as a matter of balance and to dread all over-emphasis upon any one ingredient. This has always been the view of elderly men and must therefore have a physiological source, but one cannot escape from one's physiology by being aware of it.
I am not surprised at what people thought of The Conquest of Happiness on your side of the Atlantic. What surprised me much more was that English highbrows thought well of it. I think people who are unhappy are always proud of being so, and therefore do not like to be told that there is nothing grand about their unhappiness. A man who is melancholy because lack of exercise has upset his liver always believes that it is the loss of God, or the menace of Bolshevism, or some such dignified cause that makes him sad. When you tell people that happiness is a simple matter, they get annoyed with you.
All best wishes,
Yours sincerely Bertrand Russell
17th Feb. 1931
Dear Norton
Thank you for your letter of February 9th. My method of achieving happiness was discovered by one of the despised race of philosophers, namely, John Locke. You will find it set forth in great detail in his book on education. This is his most important contribution to human happiness; other minor contributions were the English, American, and French revolutions.
The abstract [of The Scientific Outlook] that I sent you is not to be taken as covering all the ground that I shall, in fact, cover. Certainly education must be included in technique in society, though I had regarded it as a branch of advertising. As for behaviourism, I have included it under Pavlov. Pavlov did the work which Watson has advertised.
I have now done 36,000 words of the book, but after I have finished it, I shall keep it by me until the end of May for purposes of revision, and of adding malicious foot-notes.
I have already done a chapter on 'Science and Religion', which is explicitly atheistical. Do you object to this? It would, of course, be possible to give the whole thing an ironical twist, and possibly this might make it better literature. One could go through the arguments of the scientists, Eddington, Jeans, and their accomplices, pointing out how bad they are, and concluding that fortunately our faith need not depend upon them, since it is based upon the impregnable rock of Holy Scripture. If you prefer this as a literary form, I am prepared to re-cast the chapter in that sense. At present it is straightforward, sincere, and full of moral earnestness.
Unless I hear from you to suggest an earlier date, I propose to mail the manuscript, or to hand it to Aannestad if he is still in England, during the second week in June. It is perfectly feasible to send it sooner, but I can always improve it so long as I keep it.
I much enjoyed seeing Aannestad.
Yours sincerely Bertrand Russell
11th March 1931
Dear Norton
You will have seen that my brother died suddenly in Marseilles, I Inherit from him a title, but not a penny of money, as he was bankrupt. A title is a great nuisance to me, and I am at a loss what to do, but at any rate I do not wish it employed in connection with any of my literary work. There is, so far as I know, only one method of getting rid of it, which is to be attainted of high treason, and this would involve my head being cut off on Tower Hill. This method seems to me perhaps somewhat extreme, but I am sure I can rely upon you not to make use of my title in the way of publicity.
Yours sincerely Bertrand Russell
To Mr Runham Brown
21st March 1931
Dear Mr Runham Brown
Einstein's pronouncement on the duty of Pacifists to refuse every kind of military service has my most hearty agreement, and I am very glad that the leading intellect of our age should have pronounced himself so clearly and so uncompromisingly on this issue.
For my part I do not expect, much as I desire it, that any very large number of men will be found to take up the position of refusing to bear arms in wartime, nor do I think that a refusal on the part of two per cent would be sufficient to prevent war. The next war will, I think, be more fierce than the war which as yet is still called 'Great', and I think Governments would have no hesitation in shooting the pacifist two per cent. A more effective form of war resistance would be strikes among munition workers. But on the whole I expect more from international agreements than from the actions of individual pacifists. While, therefore, I agree with Einstein as to the duty of pacifists, I put a somewhat different emphasis upon the political and individual factors respectively.
There is one point upon which perhaps I disagree, on principle, with him and with many other Pacifists. If an international authority existed and possessed the sole legal armed forces, I should be prepared to support it even by force of arms.
Yours sincerely Bertrand Russell
To Dr Steinbach
n9th May 1931
Dear Dr Steinbach
I am afraid I have nothing very helpful to say about the English language. I notice that literary persons in America tend to study it as one studies a dead language, that is to say, it does not occur to them that the written word can be merely the spoken word transcribed. For my part, while I am willing to read good authors for the sake of their rhythms, and also to enrich my vocabulary, it would not occur to me to read them with any grammatical purpose.
I should define correct English in the year nineteen hundred and thirty-one as the habits of speech of educated people in that year, and I see no point in making a distinction between speech and writing. When once a distinction of this sort is allowed to creep in, one soon arrives at the condition of the literary Chinese. I knew a learned Chinese who was very keen on substituting the vernacular (as it is called) for the classical language. I asked him whether this movement made much progress; he replied that there are times when it does and times when it does not. 'For example,' he said, 'it made great progress during the thirteenth century.' I do not know Chinese, but I inferred that classical Chinese corresponded to Latin, and that the vernacular corresponded to Chaucer. I do not wish this sort of thing to happen to those who speak English.
Yours very truly Bertrand Russell
This and the following letter axe the long and the short of it.
From and to Will Durant
44, North Drive Great Neck, N.Y. June 8th, 1931
Earl Bertrand Russell Cam Voel, Porthcurno Cornwall, England
Dear Earl Russell
Will you interrupt your busy life for a moment, and play the game of philosophy with me?
I am attempting to face, in my next book, a question that our generation, perhaps more than most, seems always ready to ask, and never able to answer - What is the meaning or worth of human life? Heretofore this question has been dealt with chiefly by theorists, from Ikhnaton and Lao-tse to Bergson and Spengler. The result has been a species of intellectual suicide: thought, by its very development, seems to have destroyed the value and significance of life. The growth and spread of knowledge, for which so many reformers and idealists prayed, appears to bring to its devotees - and, by contagion, to many others - a disillusionment which has almost broken the spirit of our race.
Astronomers have told us that human affairs constitute but a moment in the trajectory of a star; geologists have told us that civilisa-tion is a precarious interlude between ice ages; biologists have told us that all life is war, a struggle for existence among individuals, groups, nations, alliances, and species; historians have told us that 'progress' is a delusion, whose glory ends in inevitable decay; psychologists have told us that the will and the self are the helpless instruments of heredity and environment, and that the once incorruptible soul is only a transient incandescence of the brain. The Industrial Revolution has destroyed the home, and the discovery of contraceptives is destroying the family, the old morality, and perhaps (through the sterility of the intelligent) the race. Love is analysed into a physical congestion, and marriage becomes a temporary physiological convenience slightly superior to promiscuity. Democracy has degenerated into such corruption as only Milo's Rome knew; and our youthful dreams of a socialist Utopia disappear as we see, day after day, the inexhaustible acquisitiveness of men. Every invention strengthens the strong and weakens the weak; every new mechanism displaces men, and multiplies the horrors of war. God, who was once the consolation of our brief life, and our refuge in bereavement and suffering, has apparently vanished from the scene; no telescope, no microscope discovers him. Life has become, in that total perspective which is philosophy, a fitful pullulation of human insects on the earth, a planetary eczema that may soon be cured; nothing is certain in it except defeat and death - a sleep from which, it seems, there is no awakening.
We are driven to conclude that the greatest mistake in human history was the discovery of truth. It has not made us free, except from delusions that comforted us, and restraints that preserved us; it has not made us happy, for truth is not beautiful, and did not deserve to be so passionately chased. As we look upon it now we wonder why we hurried so to find it. For it appears to have taken from us every reason for existing, except for the moment's pleasure and tomorrow's trivial hope.
This is the pass to which science and philosophy have brought us. I, who have loved philosophy for many years, turn from it now back to life itself, and ask you, as one who has lived as well as thought, to help me understand. Perhaps the verdict of those who have lived is different from that of those who have merely thought. Spare me a moment to tell me what meaning life has for you, what help ~ if any religion gives you, what keeps you going, what are the sources of your inspiration and your energy, what is the goal or motive-force of your toil; where you find your consolations and your happiness, where in the last resort your treasure lies. Write briefly if you must; write at leisure and at length if you possibly can; for every word from you will be precious to me.
Sincerely Will Durant
Author of The Story of Philosophy, Transition, The Mansions of Philosophy, Philosophy and the Social Problem, etc.
Formerly of the Dept. of Philosophy, Columbia University; Ph.D., (Columbia); L.H.D. (Syracuse).
P.S. A copy of this letter is being sent to Presidents Hoover and Masaryk; die Rt. Hons. Ramsay MacDonald, Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, and Philip Snowden; M. Aristide Briand; Signors Benito Mussolini, G. Marconi and G. d'Annunzio; Mme. Curie, Miss Mary Garden and Miss Jane Addams; Dean Inge; and Messrs. Josef Stalin, Igor Stravinsky, Leon Trotzky, M. K. Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Ignace Paderewski, Richard Strauss, Albert Einstein, Gerhardt Hauptmann, Thomas Mann, Sigmund Freud, G. B. Shaw, H. G. Wells, John Galsworthy, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Eugene O'Neill.
The purpose in view is purely philosophical. I trust, however, that there will be no objection to my quoting from the replies in my forthcoming book On the Meaning of Life, one chapter of which will attempt to give some account of the attitude towards life of the most eminent of living men and women.
20th June 1931
Dear Mr Durant
I am sorry to say that at the moment I am so busy as to be convinced that life has no meaning whatever, and that being so, I do not see how I can answer your questions intelligently.
I do not see that we can judge what would be the result of the discovery of truth, since none has hitherto been discovered
Yours sincerely Bertrand Russell
From and to Albert Einstein
Caputh bet Potsdam Waldstr. 7/8 den 14. Oktober 1931
Lieber Bertrand Russell!
Ich habe schon lange den Wunsch, Ihnen zu schreiben. Nichts anderes wollte ich dabei, als Itmen meine hohe Bewimdenmg ausdrücken. Die Klarheit, Sicherheit, and Unparteilichkeit, mit der Sie die logischen, philosophischen und menschlichen Dinge in Ihren Büchern behandelt haben, steht nicht nur in unserer Generation unerreicht da.
Dies zu sagen hätte ich mich immer gescheut, weil Sie die objektiven Dinge so auch dies selber schon am besten wissen und keine Bestätigung nötig haben. Aber da löst mir ein kleitter Journalist, der mich heute aufsuchte, die Zunge. Es handelt sich da um ein interneuionales journalist-isches Unternehmett (Cooperation) dent die besten Leute als Mitarbeiter angehören, und das sich die Aufgabe gestettt hat, das Publikan in alien Ländern in internationalem Sinne zu erziehen. Mittel: Artikel von Staatsmännern und Journalisten, welche einschlägige Fragen behandeln, werden systematisch in Zeitungen aller Länder veröffentlicht.
Herr Dr J. Révész gent in kurzem nach England, um fü diese Sache zu wirken. Es würde nach meiner Ueberzeugung wichtig sein, wenn Sie ihm eine kurze Unterredung gewährten, demit er Sie in dieser Angekgenheit informieren harm. Ich richte eine solche Bitte mcht leichthin, an Sie, sondern in der Ueberzeugung, dass die Angelegenheit Ihrer Beachtung wirklich wert sei.
In freudiger Verehrung Ihr A. Einstein
P.S. Einer Bemtmortung dieses Briefes bedarf es nicht.
(Translation by Otto Nathan):
October 14, 1931
Dear Bertrand Russell
For a long time I have had the wish to write you. All I wanted to do, was to express my feeling of high admiration of you. The clarity, sureties,, sad impartiality which you have brought to bear to the logical, philosophical and human problems dealt with in your books are unrivalled not Only in our generation.
I have always been reluctant to say this to you because you know about this yourself as well as you know about objective facts and do not need to receive any confirmation from outside. However, a little-known journalist who came to see me today has now given me an opportunity to open my heart to you. I am referring to an international journalistic enterprise (Cooperation) to which the best people belong as contributors and which has the purpose of educating the public in all countries in international understanding. The method to be used is to publish systematically articles by statesmen and journalists on pertinent problems in newspapers of all countries.
The gentleman in question, Dr J. Révész, will visit England in the near future to promote the project. I believe it would be important if you could grant him a short interview so he could inform you about the matter. I have hesitated to ask of you this favour, but I am convinced that the project really deserves your attention.
with warm admiration,
Yours A. Einstein
P.S. There is no need to reply to this letter.
Telegraph House Harting Petersfield 7.1.35
Dear Einstein
I have long wished to be able to invite you for a visit, but had until recently no house to which to ask you. Now this obstacle is removed, & I very much hope you will come for a week-end. Either next Saturday (12th) or the 19th would suit me; after that I shall be for 6 weeks in Scandinavia & Austria, so if the 12th & 19th are both impossible, it will be necessary to wait till the second half of March. I can scarcely imagine a greater pleasure than a visit from you would give me, & there are many matters both in the world of physics & in that of human affairs on which I should like to know your opinion more definitely than I do.
Yours very sincerely Bertrand Russell
From and to Henri Barbusse
Vigilia Miramar par Théoule (Aipes-Maritimes) IO février 1927
Cher et éminent confrére
Permettez-mois de joindre un appel personnel à celut que vous trou-verez ci-incluis et auquel je vous demands- de bien vouloir adhérer. Voire nom est un de ceux qui s'imposent dans une ligue de grands honnites gens qui se l&oeraient pour enrayer et combattre l'envahissante barbarie du fascisme.
J'ai rédigé cet appel spontanétnent, I sans obéir á aucune suggestion d'ordre politique on autre. Je ti'ai écoutè que le sentiment de la solidarité et la voix du ban sens: le mal n'est pas sans remede; il y a 'quelque chose à fairs'; el ce qu'on peut faire surtout et avant tout devant les proportions effray antes qu'a prises le fascisms, c'est de dresser une force morale, de mobiliser la vraie conscience publique, et de dormer une voix explicits á une réprobation qui est répandue partout.
Je dots ajouter que, sur la teneur de cet appel, j' at échangé das vues avec Remain Rolland, qui est de tout coeur avec moi, et qui estime comme moi qu'une levée des esprits libres, qu'une protestation des persotmes éclairées et respectées, est seule susceptible, si elle organisée et continue, de mettre un frein à un état de choses épouvantable.
Je liens enfin à vous dire que j'ai Vintention de créer très prochainement me revue internationale: Monde, qui aura pour but de diffuser de grands principes humains dans le chaos international actuel, de lutter contre l'esprit et la propagande réaclionnaires. Cette publication peut devemr, swr le plan intellectuel, artistique, moral et social, une importante tribune, si des personnalites comme vous le veulent bien. Elle servira de véhicule à la voix du Comité, et donnera corps à sa haute protestation.
Je vous serais reconnaissant si vous me disiez que vous acceptez d'être considéré comme un collaborateur éventuel de Monde.
Je vous serais également obligé de me répondre au sujet de l'appel par une lettre dont je pourrais faire état le cas échéant, en la pvbliant en son entier ou en extraits.
Croyez à mes sentiments de haute considération dévouée.
Henri Barbusse
Sylvie Aumont par Senlis (Oise) 12 décembre 1932
Mon cher Russell
Le Comité Tom Mooney voulant profiler du changement de gouvernement aux Etats-Unis pour arriver à la solution de l'affaire Tom Mooney, au sujet de laquelle de nouvelles révélations viennent encore de se produire, a décidé l'envoi au Président Roosevelt de la lettre ci-jointe qui bien que cotifue en termes officiels et très déférents, quoique fermes, nous parait susceptible d'apporter réellanent un terme au scandaleux martyrs de Tom Mooney et de Billings.
Je vous demandé de bien vouloir y apposer voire signature et de me la renvoyer d'urgence.
Croyez à mes sentiments amicaux.
Henri Barbusse
Je vous envoie d'autre part une brochure éditée par le Comité lam Mooney.
47 Emperor s Gate S.W.7 16th December 1932
Dear Barbusse
I am at all times willing to do anything that seems to me likely to help Mooney, but I have a certain hesitation about the draft letter that you have sent me.
You will, of course, remember that in the time of Kerensky the Russian Government made an appeal to President Wilson on the subject, and that he, in consequence, had the Mooney case investigated by a number of eminent legal authorities who reported favourably to Mooney. The State of California, however, pointed out that the President had no right to interfere with State administration of justice.
I do not think there is very much point in appealing to the President Elect, as he will merely take shelter behind his lack of legal power. In any case it would be no use presenting the letter until after he becomes President, which will, I think, be on March 4th. There is no doubt also that at this moment American public opinion is not feeling particularly friendly to either your country or mine, and I doubt whether we can usefully intervene until passions have cooled.
Yours sincerely Bertrand Russell
This letter shows that I was not always impetuous.
From Count Michael Károlyi
The White Hall Hotel 70 Guildford St, W.C.1 5th Feb. 1935
My dear Russell
I want to thank you for the brilliant letter you wrote for the defence of Rákosi.1 The trial is still on, and the final sentence may come any day now. If he does not get a death sentence it will be due in very great part to your intervention. I fear in this case, however, that he will be imprisoned for life. Of course, we will try to save, him even so perhaps we can succeed in getting him exchanged for something or other from the Soviet government.
1 Mátyás Rákosi, a Hungarian communist, re-arrested upon his release from a long prison sentence. His life was saved but he was again imprisoned. In 1940 Russia obtained him in exchange for Hungarian flags captured in 1849. Later Rákosi became Deputy Prime Minister of Hungary.
The last time I saw you, you invited me to spend a week-end with you. If I am not inconveniencing you I should like to come and see you, not this Sunday, but any other time which would suit you.
There are so many things to talk over with you - please let me know.
My new address is as above, and my telephone number is Terminus 5512.
Yours very sincerely M. Károlyi
From Gerald Brenan, author of The Spanish Labyrinth and other books
June 1st 1935 Churriana [Malaga]
Dear Bertie
I see that I have to say something really very stupid indeed to draw a letter from you. My letter was written late at night, when ones thoughts and fears tend to carry one away, and I regretted it afterwards. I spent the next day in penance reading an account of de Montford's campaign.
It is easy enough to sympathise with the destructive desires of revolutionaries; the difficulty in most cases is to agree that they are likely to do any good. What I really dislike about them are their doctrinaire ideas and their spirit of intolerance. The religious idea in Communism, which is the reason for its success, (the assurance it gives of Time that is God, being on ones side) will lead in the end perhaps to a sort of Mohammedan creed of brotherhood & stagnation. The energy and combativeness of Christian nations comes, I suspect, from the doctrine of sin, particularly Original Sin and the kind of struggle that must go on for redemption (or for money). But for Augustine's Manichaeanism we should have been a more docile but less interesting lot. I am opposed to this Communist religion, because I think that Socialism shd be a matter of administration only. Any religious ideas that get attached to it will be impoverishing, unless of course they are treated lightly, as the Romans treated the worship of Augustus or the Chinese treated Confucianism. But that of course may [not] be the case. - Anyhow since one has in the end to accept or reject these things en bloc, I shall support Communism when I see it is winning - and I shall always support it against Fascism.
Out here every day brings news of the disintegration of the Popular Front. Moderate Socialists, Revolutionary Socialists and Syndicalists are all at loggerheads. Disorders go on increasing and I think that the most likely end is dictatorship. I incline to think that the best thing for the country would be a Dictatorship of the moderate left (present government with Socialists) for, say, ten years. I understand that the agricultural unemployment cannot be solved until large areas at present unirrigated have been made irrigateable. Dams have been begun, but many more are wanted and fifteen years must elapse till they are ready. The plan is for the Govt to control investments & direct them upon these dams, repaying the lenders by a mortgage on the new irrigated land.
The weather is delicious now and every moment of life is a pleasure. Besides health and weather - which is Nature's health - very little matters. It would be nice if you rented a house out here & brought out some of your books. If everything in Spain is uncertain - what about the rest of Europe?
With love from us both to you & Peter
ever yrs Gerald Brenan
Public opinion in England seems alarmingly warlike. I favour the dropping of sanctions and conclusion of a Mediterranean pact, which would be a check to Mussolini. But then we must be ready to go to war if he takes a Greek island.
In England the importance of Austria's not going Nazi is always underestimated. The Times refused to look at Central Europe at all. The English are priggish about everything beyond Berlin - Vienna Venice. I suspect that you think as I do.
From Mrs Gerald Brenan
Bell Court Aldboume, Marlborough [Nov. 1938]
My dear Bertie
I thought of you very much in those really horrible days - which must have been dreadful to you going further & further away from your children and leaving them behind in such a world. It is the kind of thing you might dream of in an evil nightmare - but it was one of those modern nightmares in which you are still awake.
I share your difficulties. I am and always shall be a pacifist. But sometimes they seem to 'cry Peace Peace when there is no peace'. What a world we live in.
Power is having wonderful reviews, I see, and is a best seller. I am so glad. I hope to read it soon.
We have had an Anarchist from Holland staying with us, the Secretary of the AIT. He was a charming & very intelligent man, & had been a good deal in Spain with the CNT.
He was a great admirer of yours. He said that he had recently written an article on Anarchism for an Encyclopedia. In the Bibliography at the end he included 'All the works of Bertrand Russell' because, he explains, though they are not actually Anarchist they have 'the tendency' as old Anarchists say.
I was pleased - for whatever Anarchist parties are in practice 'the tendency' I'm sure is right. We went to Savernake Forest one day. The autumn leaves were beginning to fell but the day was warm & bright. I wished for you & Peter & John & Kate. Perhaps we will walk there again another day.
I hope you & Peter are as happy as it is possible to be so far from home & in such days.
With love to you both
Yours ever Gomel
Bell Court Aldbourne, Marlborough [Winter 1938-9]
My dear Bertie
I was so glad to get your letter and to think that you will be coming home now before so very long and we shall see you again.
Yes, we must somehow meet more often. We must have picnics in Savernake Forest - and find some charming place to come together half way between Kidlington and Aldbourne. Gerald and I are going to take to bicycles this summer, so we can meet anywhere.
I am sure America is very difficult to be in now. I was afraid you and Peter would find it trying in many ways - the tremendous lionising must be very exhausting and very tiresome in the end however well they mean.
Longmans Green are going to bring out my book some time in the late spring I think. I am glad, for I think in a small way it is a useful book. It is such a painful picture of the war state of mind. It is to be called Death's Other Kingdom, from T. S. Eliot's line 'Is it like this in Death's other kingdom?'
Gerald and I have both read Power with great interest and great admiration. It has made a great impression, I gather, not only from the reviews, but from the fact that almost every intelligent person I meet happens somehow in some connection to mention it.
I can understand how you long to be in England. And I am so glad that you will soon be coming home.
With much love to you all,
Yours Gamel
I am delighted to learn the real provenance of my name - but I am not sure how I feel about its nearness to Camel.
From Mrs Bernard Berenson
The Mud House Friday's Hill, Haslemere July 28, 1936
My dear Bertie
Might I motor over & call upon you and your wife on Thursday or Friday of this week, or sometime next week?
I've been very ill, and one of the results of illness is to make me understand what things have been precious in my life, and you were one of the most precious. I do not want to die without seeing you again & thanking you for so many things.
Yours affectionately Mary Berenson
To and from Lion Fitzpatrick
Telegraph House Harting, Petersfield 21.12.36
Dear Lion
It was very disappointing that I was ill just when we were coming to you - it was gastric flu, brief but incapacitating. We look forward to seeing you towards the end of January.
As Alys is going to stay with you, I wonder whether you could say some little word of a friendly sort from me, I am the more anxious for this because Airs Berenson said a number of very critical things about Alys, to which I listened in stony silence; & I dare say she went away saying I had said them, I don't want to make mischief, so that there would be no point in mentioning Mrs Berenson to Alys; but I should be sorry if Alys thought that I said or felt unfriendly things about her.
Yours B R
The Warden's Lodgings All Souls College, Oxford Dec. 28. 36
Dear Bertie
All right. I'll try to do that. But it isn't easy to Inform Alys about you. She likes to think she knows everything about you. At bottom she is intensely interested in you but she still seems raw even after all these years. I expect she cares quite a lot about you still. People are queer. If they are without humour they either dry up or get rather rancid. I feel that to be able to regard yourself as somewhat of a joke is the highest virtue.
I'll ask (?) [illegible word] over when Alys & Grace Worthington and after them the Wells go - It will be in Feb. I am afraid unless I could come in between visits. But I generally have to go to bed then oh Lord how unadaptable the English are and how unimpressionable the U.S. (?) [illegible word]. These people here are Scottish & Ulster. Much more flexible breed.
I have a rather miserable spot in my sub-conscious about your book on philosophy. I do wish you could get it out of you before you die - I think it would be important! - after all that is what you ought to be doing - not pot boilers. Bill Adams (the son of the Warden here) has been listening to you somewhere on physics and says your brain is the clearest in England - (Is this great praise in a country where brains are nearly all muddled and proud of it sir?)
My regards to Lady Russell - I hope she is well - I write to her later
Lion
Lion Fitzpatrick, the writer of the preceding letter, was a close friend of Alys's and later also of mine. 'Lion' was a nickname given to her on account of her mane of black hair. Her father had been a Belfast business man, who, owing to drink, had first gone bankrupt and then died. She came to England penniless, and was employed by Lady Henry Somerset on philanthropic work in Somerstown (St Pancras). I met her first on June 10, 1894, at a Temperance Procession which I attended because of Alys. We quarrelled about the Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, concerning which I made some disparaging remark. Shortly afterwards she followed the example of Bernard Shaw by standing for the St Pancras Vestry (which corresponded to what is now the Borough Council). She lived up a back staircase in a slum, and as I had my Cambridge furniture to dispose of, I gave some of it to her.
Meanwhile, through Alys, she came to know a young man named Bobby Phillimore, who had proposed to Alys but been refused. He was at Christchurch, and was the son of Lord Phillimore, a very rich Liberal Law Lord and a close friend of Mr Gladstone. Bobby, I think under Logan's influence, became Socialist and a poet. He was the original of the poet in Shaw's Candida. He decided that he wanted to marry Lion, but he was not going to repeat the mistake of precipitancy which he had committed with Alys. So he got himself elected to the St Pancras Vestry and carefully prepared his approaches. Shortly after Alys and I were married, when we were living in Berlin, I got a letter from Lion asking my advice as to whether she should accept him. I wrote back at once giving twelve reasons against. By return of post I got a letter from her saying that she had accepted him.
In the following spring, when Alys and I were staying with her sister at Fiesole, Lion and Bobby came to see us on their return from their honeymoon in North Africa. I then for the first time learned why she had accepted him. After she had resolutely refused him for some time, he developed heart trouble, and eminent medical men gave it as their opinion that if she persisted he would die. His father pleaded with her, but in vain. Finally, in response to impassioned request from Lord Phillimore, Mr Gladstone, though eighty and nearly blind, climbed her slummy staircase in person to urge her to abandon the role of Barbara Allen. This was too much for her, and she accepted her love-sick swain.
So far, so good - a pleasant King Cophetua story. But in Fiesole, after her honeymoon, she told a surprising sequel. Alys and I noticed at once that she had become profoundly cynical, and amazingly obscene in her conversation, so we naturally pressed her as to what produced such a change. She told us that, as soon as she and Bobby were married, he told her he had deceived the doctors, and had nothing the matter with his heart;1 further that, though he had been determined to marry her, he did not love her and never had loved her. I believe the marriage was never consummated.
1 However, he died of heart disease some years later.
Bobby's father owned Radlett, at that time a picturesque country village; he owned also a rather beautiful country house between Radlett and Elstree. He gave Bobby the house and a free hand in managing the estate. The poet and the Socialist receded into the background, and were replaced by a very hard-headed business man, who proceeded to develop Radlett by putting up vast numbers of cheap, ugly, sordid suburban villas, which brought in an enormous profit. Years later he really did become ill. His wife nursed him devotedly for about three years, at the end of which he died. After his death she told me she would marry any man who would promise to be always ill, because she had grown so used to nursing that she did not know how to fill her days without it.
She did not, however, many again. She published anonymously a book which had a considerable success, called By an unknown disciple. She had an abortive affair with Massingham. She took a great interest in psychical research. Being left a rich widow, she devoted a large part of her income to support of the Labour Party. I saw little of her in her last years, because she demanded that one should treat seriously things that I regard as nonsense - sentimental religiosity, second sight, the superior intuitions of the Irish, and so on. But I regretted these obstacles, and tried to see her without either quarrels or insincerity.
To W. V. Quine, the Harvard logician
Telegraph House Harting, Petersfield 6-6-35
Dear Dr Quine
Your book [System of Logistic] arrived at a moment when I was over-worked and obliged to take a long holiday. The result is that I have only just finished reading it.
I think you have done a beautiful piece of work; it is a long time since I have had as much intellectual pleasure as in reading you.
Two questions occurred to me, as to which I should be glad to have answers when you have time. I have put them on a separate sheet.
In reading you I was struck by the fact that, in my work, I was always being influenced by extraneous philosophical considerations. Take e.g. descriptions. I was interested in 'Scott is the author of Waverley', and not only in the descriptive functions of PM.1 If you look up Meinong's work, you will see the sort of fallacies I wanted to avoid; the same applies to the ontological argument.
1 Principia Mathematica.
Take again notation (mainly Whitehead's): we had to provide for the correlators in Parts III and IV. Your αβ for our R|S would not do for three or more relations, or for various forms (such as R||S) we needed.
I am worried - though as yet I cannot put my worry into words - as to whether you really have avoided the troubles for which the axiom of reducibility was introduced as completely as you think. I should like to see Induction and Dedekindian continuity explicitly treated by your methods.
I am a little puzzled as to the status of classes in your system. They appear as a primitive idea, but the connection of α with 
seems somewhat vague. Do you maintain that, if 
the prop. Xα, is identical with 
You must, if you are to say that all props are sequences. Yet it seems obvious that 'I gave sixpence to my son' is not the same as 'my son is one of the people to whom I gave sixpence'.
And do you maintain that an infinite class can be defined otherwise than by a defining function? The need of including infinite classes was one of my reasons for emphasising functions as opposed to classes in PM.
I expect you have good answers to these questions.
In any case, I have the highest admiration for what you have done, which has reformed many matters as to which I had always been uncomfortable.
Yours very truly Bertrand Russell
To G. E. Moore
Telegraph House Harting, Petersfield Feb. 8, 1937
Dear Moore
I have become very desirous of returning to purely philosophic work; in particular, I want to develop the ideas in my paper on 'The Limits of Empiricism', & to investigate the relation of language to fact, as to which Carnap's ideas seem to me very inadequate. But I am in the unfortunate position of being legally bound to pay between £800 & £900 a year to other people, & having only £300 a year of unearned income. I cannot therefore work at philosophy unless I can get some academic job. I suppose there is no possibility at Cambridge? I should be very glad if there were, as my desire to get back to philosophy is very strong.
Yours Bertrand Russell
Telegraph House Halting, Petersfield Feb. 18, 1937
Dear Moore
Thank you for your letter, which shows the position to be much as I supposed. I think perhaps, at the moment, it is hardly worth proceeding in the matter, as the chance of success seems small, & there are other possibilities elsewhere. I am very grateful to you for being willing to recommend me, & if other things fail I will write to you again. In the meantime, I think it will be best to do nothing.
The Leverhulme Fellowships are settled in June; till then, I shall not know. In any case they only last two years.
Yours Bertrand Russell
From Desmond MacCarthy
25 Wellington Square S.W.3 March 16. 37
Dear Bertie
I am relieved that you thought my review likely to wet the public appetite: that is what I tried to do. I did not write it well: I wrote it too quickly and only had time to make perfunctory corrections, but I think it will persuade people that The Amberley Papers are very interesting. I went to Trinity Commem: and dined in Hall on Sunday night. I found the review was working there.
What I am pleased about is that I got G. M. Young to write about it in the Observer. He wanted to write about it in the S. T. & I got him, by grabbing the book from him, to offer his comments to Garvin.
I don't expect that you hope for a large sale, but I think it may have a very respectable one & go on selling.
I am interested to hear that you have sold Telegraph House, & long to hear particulars. I am afraid the price was not not [sic] good or you would have written with more elation. It does not mean - does it that your worst money worries are at an end? Do you remember what a fuss Schopenhauer made about having to pension the woman he pushed down stairs for the term of her natural life? And he had only a brown poodle dependent on him, (Its name was Butz) and you have never pushed a woman down stairs. Do you remember his triumphant entry in his diary after many years, Obit anus, abit onus? I look forward to getting two postcards from you, soon, with these words on them.
It is of the utmost importance that you should have leisure to write your book clearing up the relation of grammar and philosophy and many things beside. Is it true that you could manage on £500 a year till you can write those post-cards? Your admirers ought to be able to raise that. Would you object to being pensioned? I shouldn't if my prospects were as good as yours of writing something valuable.
Time is getting short now. I don't mean that death is necessarily near either of us, but the slow death is near; the softening and relaxing of the faculty of attention which in its approach feels so like wisdom to the victim.
I met Shaw not long ago & he talked about his latest works, which exhibit all his astonishing aptitudes - except grip. I had an impulse to say (but I thought it too unkind) 'Aren't you afraid though of letting out the deadly secret - that you can no longer care?' I guessed the nature of that secret from having observed what was threatening me. But with you & me it is still only a threat - You, especially, can still care, for your power of feeling has always been stronger than mine. Still, time is short. We are all (and I mean also people neither of us know) [anxious] that you should philosophise, and write your book before the power to write it begins to be insensibly sucked away in the fat folds of that hydra, old age.
I stayed with Moore and we were happy - grey-beards at play, most of the time. He made me read a paper by Wisdom on Definition but I didn't get the hang of it. It was Wittgensteinian. I wanted to talk about myself and make Moore talk about himself, but we didn't care enough to get over the discomfort of leaving the pleasant shore of memories. But damn it I'll do it next time (This isn't the first time though, I've said that). Do please send me word when you are next in London & come to lunch or in the morning or in the afternoon, or to dinner - any time. We cd put you up. Dermod is a ships doctor, his room is empty. And I will come to you for a visit in May after my Leslie Stephen lecture. Give my affectionate & best wishes to 'Peter' for a happy delivery
Yours always, Desmond