BR TO LORD MILFORD, 24 MAY 1952
BRACERS 11847. ALD. McMaster. Russell 15 (1995): 51
Edited by K. Blackwell

Dear Milford,1 ^, 2

Thank you for your letter. You ask whether I’ve got anywhere as regards to the problems of existence. I know the meaning of “existence”. It is defined in Chapter 14 of Principia Mathematica.3 Existence, not in quotes, has no meaning and the question “has it a meaning?” is meaningless.

The newspapers got the matter a little wrong about the use of my title. Like Lord Trent I avoid it for trade purposes as my old name has a certain monetary value. Except for trade purposes, I use my title.

I see no reason whatsoever to believe in immortality. I think that a person is an organization like a cricket club and that one might just as well expect a cricket club to go to heaven when it is dissolved as expect the same thing about oneself.4

Yours ever

• 1[document] Published in K. Blackwell, “Two Days in the Dictation of Bertrand Russell”, Russell 15 (1995): 37–52 (at 51).
• 2

  Milford Laurence Philipps, Lord Milford, wrote BR on 19 May 1952 (RA1 710). He seems to have known BR for a very long time, although he did not matriculate from Cambridge in the years BR studied there. His tone is often rude. At one point he indirectly calls BR “the ugliest man they [the BBC] know”.

• 3

  It’s defined in Chapter 14 of Principia Mathematica. I.e. *14, Descriptions.

• 4

  I think that a person … about oneself. Milford had written that “I feel that my ego is something permanent that could not possibly be created or destroyed and that it has only borrowed its present body as a temporary machine now nearly worn out — what next?”.