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seats of learning unique.LETTERSTo Maurice Amos16th June 1930Dear MauriceYou 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 foranything beyond the day’s work. I meant to answer your letter, but as theright moment went by, the impulse died.I like Jean’s book. It is amusing how the physicists have come round topoor old Bishop Berkeley. You remember how when we were young wewere taught that although idealism was, of course, quite the thing, BishopBerkeley’s form of it was rather silly; now it is the only form that survives. Ido not see how to refute it, though temperamentally I ?nd it repulsive. Itought, of course, in any case to be solipsism. I lectured on this subject atHarvard, with Whitehead in the Chair, and I said it seemed to me improbablethat I had composed the parts of his books which I could not understand, as Ilater years of telegraph house 413should be compelled to believe if I were a solipsist. Nevertheless I have neversucceeded in ?nding any real evidence that I did not do so.I am very much interested in what you say about your book on the BritishConstitution, and especially amused that you had written 46,000 out of the50,000 requisite words before you reached Parliament. Parliament hasbecome a somewhat unimportant body. In the 19th century the PrimeMinisters resigned when defeated in Parliament until Gladstone alteredthe practice; now by the threat of dissolution they terrorise Parliament. TheConstitution would not be appreciably changed if the Prime Minister weredirectly elected, selected the Government, and had to seek re-election eitherafter ?ve years or when a leader appeared against him in his own Party Press.I think you are entirely right in what you say about the Labour Party. I donot like them, but an Englishman has to have a Party just as he has to havetrousers, and of the three Parties I ?nd them the least painful. My objection tothe 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 ofone’s reason. I know that my trousers might be better than they are; neverthe-less they seem to me better than none.It is true that I had never heard of Holdsworth’s History of English Law, butin fact I have never read any books at all about law except one or two ofMaitland’s.Since I returned from America I have been very much tied here, but Iexpect to be in London occasionally during the autumn and I should verymuch like to see you then.Sanger’s death was a great grief to me.Ever yours a?ectionatelyBertrand RussellFrom and to Bronislaw Malinowski,the anthropologist The London School of Economics13th November 1930Dear RussellOn the occasion of my visit to your School I left my only presentablebrown hat in your anteroom. I wonder whether since then it has had theprivilege of enclosing the only brains in England which I ungrudginglyregard as better than mine; or whether it has been utilised in some of thejuvenile experimentations in physics, technology, dramatic art, or prehistoricsymbolism; or whether it naturally lapsed out of the anteroom.If none of these events, or shall we rather call them hypotheses, holdsgood or took place, could you be so good as to bring it in a brown paperparcel or by some other concealed mode of transport to London andadvise me on a post card where I could reclaim it? I am very sorry that mythe autobiography of bertrand russell 414absentmindedness, which is a characteristic of high intelligence, has exposedyou to all the inconvenience incidental to the event.I do hope to see you some time soon.Yours sincerelyB. Malinowski15th Nov. 1930Dear MalinowskiMy secretary has found a presentable brown hat in my lobby which Ipresume 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 the Students’Union on Monday (17th), and unless my memory is as bad and my intelli-gence as good as yours, I will leave your hat with the porter at the Schoolof Economics, telling him to give it to you on demand.I too hope that we may meet some time soon. I made the acquaintance ofBri?ault1the other day, and was amazed by his pugnacity.Yours sincerelyBertrand RussellFrom and to G. E. Moore86, Chesterton RoadCambridgeMar. 9/30Dear RussellThe Council of Trinity made a grant to Wittgenstein last June to enable himto carry on his researches on the foundations of Mathematics. There is now aquestion of making him a further grant; & they wish, before they decide, tohave 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 afraidit will involve a good deal of trouble. Wittgenstein has written a great deal; buthe says it would be absolutely necessary for him to explain it to you in conver-sation, if you are to understand it. I think he would be very glad to have anopportunity of doing this, but it would no doubt take up a good deal of yourtime. I hope very much that you will nevertheless be willing to do it; for thereseems to be no other way of ensuring him a su?cient income to continue hiswork, unless the Council do make him a grant; and I am afraid there is verylittle chance that they will do so, unless they can get favourable reports fromexperts in the subject; and you are, of course, by far the most competentperson 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. Hewould arrange to go to see you, when & where it suited you best.Yours fraternallyG. E. Moorelater years of telegraph house 415Beacon Hill SchoolHarting, Peters?eld11th March 1930Dear MooreI do not see how I can refuse to read Wittgenstein’s work and make areport on it. At the same time, since it involves arguing with him, you areright that it will require a great deal of work. I do not know anything morefatiguing than disagreeing with him in an argument.Obviously the best plan for me would be to read the manuscript carefully?rst, and see him afterwards. How soon could you let me have his stu?? Ishould like if possible to see him here before the 5th of April: on that date Ishall be going to Cornwall for Easter, and I do not want to have any work to dowhile there, as I have been continuously very busy since the end of last sum-mer. I do not know how long it will be necessary to argue with him. I couldspare three days, say the Friday, Saturday and Sunday preceding April 5th, butit would be di?cult for me to spare more. Do you think this would beenough?Yours fraternallyBertrand Russell86, Chesterton RoadCambridgeMarch 13/30Dear RussellWittgenstein says that he has nothing written which it would be worthwhile to let you see: all that he has written is at present in too confused astate. I am sorry that I had not clearly understood this when I wrote to youbefore. What he wants is merely to have a chance of explaining to you someof the results which he has arrived at, so that you might be able to report tothe Council whether, even if you thought them mistaken, you thought themimportant & such that he ought to be given a chance of going on working onthe same lines; and I hope that a report of this kind would be su?cient for theCouncil. And I should think 3 days would be ample for this, & that itwouldn’t be necessary for you to argue with him much. He is wiring to younow to ask if he could see you on Saturday either at Harting or in London (ifyou should be there), so as to try to make some arrangement with you. Ithink he will be in Austria on April 5th.Yours fraternallyG. E. Moorethe autobiography of bertrand russell 41617th March 1930Dear MooreWittgenstein has been here for the weekend, and we have talked as muchas there was time for.I should be glad to know what is the latest date for reporting to theCouncil, since my impressions at the moment are rather vague, and heintends while in Austria to make a synopsis of his work which would make itmuch easier for me to report adequately. If it is impossible to waitanother month or so, I will do my best to draw up a report on the basis ofour conversations, but I hope this is not necessary. He intends to visit meagain in Cornwall just before the beginning of the May term, with hissynopsis.Yours fraternallyBertrand Russell5th May 1930Dear MooreI had a second visit from Wittgenstein, but it only lasted thirty-six hours,and it did not by any means su?ce for him to give me a synopsis of all thathe has done. He left me a large quantity of typescript, which I am toforward to Littlewood as soon as I have read it. Unfortunately I have been illand 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 ideaof 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 issigni?cant to say ‘This is red’, it cannot be signi?cant 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 perhapsexactly that, but something not so very di?erent. Mistakes of grammar resultfrom confusing ‘spaces’. Then he has a lot of stu? about in?nity, which isalways in danger of becoming what Brouwer has said, and has to be pulledup short whenever this danger becomes apparent. His theories are certainlyimportant and certainly very original. Whether they are true, I do not know;I devoutly hope they are not, as they make mathematics and logic almostincredibly di?cult. One might de?ne a ‘space’, as he uses the word, as acomplete set of possibilities of a given kind. If you can say ‘This is blue’,there are a number of other things you can say signi?cantly, namely, all theother colours.I am quite sure that Wittgenstein ought to be given an opportunity topursue his work. Would you mind telling me whether this letter could pos-sibly su?ce for the Council? The reason I ask is that I have at the moment somuch to do that the e?ort involved in reading Wittgenstein’s stu?later years of telegraph house 417thoroughly is almost more than I can face. I will, however, push on with it ifyou think it is really necessary.Yours fraternallyBertrand Russell86, Chesterton RoadCambridgeMay 7/30Dear RussellI don’t think your letter to me, as it stands, will quite do as a report to theCouncil; but I don’t think it is necessary that you should spend any moretime in reading Wittgenstein’s synopsis. What I think is important is thatyou should write a formal report (which they might, perhaps, want to keepin their Report-Book), not necessarily any longer than your letter, but statingquite clearly & expressly some things which are only implicit in your letter. Ithink the report should state quite clearly just how much you have been ableto 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 shouldemphasise that your opinion of its importance, & that W. ought certainly tobe given an opportunity of continuing it, is based upon what you have beenable to learn of the nature of this new work itself, & not merely on yourprevious knowledge of W. You see the Council already know that you have avery high opinion of W.’s work in general, and what they want is youropinion as to the importance of this particular new work, not merely basedon a presumption that anything W. does is likely to be important. I think youshould try to state, very brie?y, what its nature is & what its originality &importance consists in.I’m afraid that to write such a report will be troublesome; but I hopeit wouldn’t take you very long; and I do think it’s important that it shouldbe done.Yours fraternallyG. E. MooreBeacon Hill SchoolHarting, Peters?eld8th May 1930Dear MooreI have just sent Wittgenstein’s typescript to Littlewood with a formalreport which he can pass on to the Council. It says just the same things as myletter to you, but it says them in grander language, which the Council will beable to understand. I enclose a copy.the autobiography of bertrand russell 418I ?nd I can only understand Wittgenstein when I am in good health, whichI am not at the present moment.Yours fraternallyBertrand RussellMy report to the Council of Trinity on Wittgenstein’s work:Beacon Hill SchoolHarting, Peters?eld8th May 1930Owing to illness I have been prevented from studying Wittgenstein’srecent work as thoroughly as I had intended to do. I spent ?ve days indiscussion with him, while he explained his ideas, and he left with me abulky typescript, Philosophische Bemerkungen, of which I have read about a third.The typescript, which consists merely of rough notes, would have been verydi?cult to understand without the help of the conversations. As it is, how-ever, I believe that the following represents at least a part of the ideas whichare new since the time of his Tractatus:According to Wittgenstein, when anything is the case there are certainother things that might have been the case in regard, so to speak, to thatparticular 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 isfalse, 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 talknonsense. There is thus a collection of possibilities of a certain kind which isconcerned in any fact. Such a collection of possibilities Wittgenstein calls a‘space’. Thus there is a ‘space’ of colours, and a ‘space’ of sounds. There arevarious relations among colours which constitute the geometry of that‘space’. All this is, in one sense, independent of experience: that is to say, weneed the kind of experience through which we know what ‘green’ is, but notthe kind through which we know that a certain patch of wall is green.Wittgenstein uses the word ‘grammar’ to cover what corresponds in lan-guage to the existence of these various ‘spaces’. Wherever a word denoting aregion in a certain ‘space’ occurs, the word denoting another region in that‘space’ can be substituted without producing nonsense, but a word denotingany region belonging to any other ‘space’ cannot be substituted without badgrammar, i.e. nonsense.A considerable part of Wittgenstein’s work is concerned with the inter-pretation of mathematics. He considers it false to say that mathematics is logicor consists of tautologies. He discusses ‘in?nity’ at considerable length andlinks it with the conception of possibility that he has developed in connectionwith his various ‘spaces’. He believes in ‘in?nite possibility’, as he calls it, butnot in actual ‘in?nite classes’ or ‘in?nite series’. What he says about in?nitylater years of telegraph house 419tends, obviously against his will, to have a certain resemblance to what hasbeen said by Brouwer. I think perhaps the resemblance is not so close as itappears at ?rst sight. There is much discussion of mathematical induction.The theories contained in this new work of Wittgenstein’s are novel, veryoriginal, and indubitably important. Whether they are true, I do not know. Asa logician who likes simplicity, I should wish to think that they are not, butfrom what I have read of them I am quite sure that he ought to have anopportunity to work them out, since when completed they may easily proveto constitute a whole new philosophy.Bertrand RussellTo W. W. Norton, publisher27th Jan. 1931Dear NortonThank you for your letter of January 14th...With regard to The Meaning of Science, I have an abstract of it and have donesome 10,000 words. I am afraid I could not do the sort of conclusion thatyou suggest. I do not believe that science per se is an adequate source ofhappiness, nor do I think that my own scienti?c outlook has contributed verygreatly to my own happiness, which I attribute to defecating twice a day withunfailing regularity. Science in itself appears to me neutral, that is to say, itincreases men’s power whether for good or for evil. An appreciation of theends of life is something that must be superadded to science if it is to bringhappiness. I do not wish, in any case, to discuss individual happiness, butonly the kind of society to which science is apt to give rise. I am afraid youmay be disappointed that I am not more of an apostle of science, but as I growolder, and no doubt as a result of the decay of my tissues, I begin to see thegood 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 elderlymen and must therefore have a physiological source, but one cannot escapefrom one’s physiology by being aware of it.I am not surprised at what people thought of The Conquest of Happiness on yourside of the Atlantic. What surprised me much more was that English high-brows thought well of it. I think people who are unhappy are always proud ofbeing so, and therefore do not like to be told that there is nothing grand abouttheir unhappiness. A man who is melancholy because lack of exercise hasupset his liver always believes that it is the loss of God, or the menace ofBolshevism, or some such digni?ed cause that makes him sad. When you tellpeople that happiness is a simple matter, they get annoyed with you.All best wishes,Yours sincerelyBertrand Russellthe autobiography of bertrand russell 42017th Feb. 1931Dear NortonThank you for your letter of February 9th. My method of achieving happi-ness was discovered by one of the despised race of philosophers, namely,John Locke. You will ?nd it set forth in great detail in his book on education.This is his most important contribution to human happiness; other minorcontributions were the English, American, and French revolutions.The abstract [of The Scienti?c Outlook] that I sent you is not to be taken ascovering all the ground that I shall, in fact, cover. Certainly education must beincluded in technique in society, though I had regarded it as a branch ofadvertising. As for behaviourism, I have included it under Pavlov. Pavlov didthe work which Watson has advertised.I have now done 36,000 words of the book, but after I have ?nished it, Ishall keep it by me until the end of May for purposes of revision, and ofadding malicious foot-notes.I have already done a chapter on ‘Science and Religion’, which is explicitlyatheistical. Do you object to this? It would, of course, be possible to givethe whole thing an ironical twist, and possibly this might make it betterliterature. One could go through the arguments of the scientists, Eddington,Jeans, and their accomplices, pointing out how bad they are, and concludingthat fortunately our faith need not depend upon them, since it is based uponthe impregnable rock of Holy Scripture. If you prefer this as a literary form, Iam prepared to re-cast the chapter in that sense. At present it is straight-forward, sincere, and full of moral earnestness.Unless I hear from you to suggest an earlier date, I propose to mail themanuscript, or to hand it to Aannestad if he is still in England, during thesecond week in June. It is perfectly feasible to send it sooner, but I can alwaysimprove it so long as I keep it.I much enjoyed seeing Aannestad.Yours sincerelyBertrand Russell11th March 1931Dear NortonYou will have seen that my brother died suddenly in Marseilles. I inheritfrom him a title, but not a penny of money, as he was bankrupt. A title isa great nuisance to me, and I am at a loss what to do, but at any rate I donot wish it employed in connection with any of my literary work. Thereis, so far as I know, only one method of getting rid of it, which is to beattainted of high treason, and this would involve my head being cut o? onTower Hill. This method seems to me perhaps somewhat extreme, but Ilater years of telegraph house 421am sure I can rely upon you not to make use of my title in the way ofpublicity.Yours sincerelyBertrand RussellTo Mr Runham Brown21st March 1931Dear Mr Runham BrownEinstein’s pronouncement on the duty of Paci?sts to refuse every kind ofmilitary service has my most hearty agreement, and I am very glad that theleading intellect of our age should have pronounced himself so clearly and souncompromisingly on this issue.For my part I do not expect, much as I desire it, that any very large numberof men will be found to take up the position of refusing to bear arms inwartime, nor do I think that a refusal on the part of two per cent would besu?cient to prevent war. The next war will, I think, be more ?erce thanthe war which as yet is still called ‘Great’, and I think Governments wouldhave no hesitation in shooting the paci?st two per cent. A more e?ectiveform of war resistance would be strikes among munition workers. But on thewhole I expect more from international agreements than from the actions ofindividual paci?sts. While, therefore, I agree with Einstein as to the dutyof paci?sts, I put a somewhat di?erent emphasis upon the political andindividual factors respectively.There is one point upon which perhaps I disagree, on principle, with himand with many other Paci?sts. If an international authority existed andpossessed the sole legal armed forces, I should be prepared to support it evenby force of arms.Yours sincerelyBertrand RussellTo Dr Steinbach19th May 1931Dear Dr SteinbachI am afraid I have nothing very helpful to say about the English language. Inotice that literary persons in America tend to study it as one studies a deadlanguage, that is to say, it does not occur to them that the written word can bemerely the spoken word transcribed. For my part, while I am willing to readgood 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 de?ne 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 pointin making a distinction between speech and writing. When once a distinctionthe autobiography of bertrand russell 422of this sort is allowed to creep in, one soon arrives at the condition of theliterary Chinese. I knew a learned Chinese who was very keen on substitutingthe vernacular (as it is called) for the classical language. I asked him whetherthis movement made much progress; he replied that there are times when itdoes and times when it does not. ‘For example,’ he said, ‘it made greatprogress during the thirteenth century.’ I do not know Chinese, but I inferredthat classical Chinese corresponded to Latin, and that the vernacular corres-ponded to Chaucer. I do not wish this sort of thing to happen to those whospeak English.Yours very trulyBertrand RussellThis and the following letter are the long and the short of it.From and to Will Durant44, North DriveGreat Neck, N.Y.June 8th, 1931Earl Bertrand RussellCarn Voel, PorthcurnoCornwall, England