17249

"Friday mg."

"The paper has just come, with the news about the Parliament bill. It is a great event: I am glad to be alive at such a time. After living through the war and the years that followed, and all the anxiety over Tariff Reform, it is a wonderful thing to find oneself in a great age, making landmarks for the future. Politics affect my happiness profoundly—I remember when Tariff Reform began, going about London and looking at the working men and seeing them in my thoughts ground under trusts and landlords, robbed of half the poor livelihood they had, from being deluded by interested sophists. It seemed to me so terrible that I had to do something for free trade, little as it was. And now the world is so different. Sometimes I think people who see politics from too close don't realize the greatness of the age—they don't quite feel what is being done, because they are so aware of what is not being done. The reform bill was a heroic epoch, yet in Place's diary you find nothing but abuse of 'the dirty sneaking Whigs' for not doing more. Compare this government with most, and they are angels of light.

Darling, your dear telegram has just been brought to me. How very dear of you to send it—it is a great joy. I hope you are not very tired this morning, but I fear you must be. I am very fit—I wrote two pages of my chapter last night, and have written four more now. I shall easily get it done today. I enclose a letter from Gilbert Murray about the book, also a letter from the firm. Read Gilbert's first, you will see he is quite satisfied. He hadn't yet had the two chapters I read yesterday. You might give me back the letters on Tuesday.

I loved reading the Spinoza with you. Ever since I first read Pollock's book, which was when I was an undergraduate, Spinoza has been one of the most important people in my world. But I find his importance grows greater and greater to me—all my own thought makes me understand him better, and see the things he is meaning to say more clearly and with more knowledge of their importance. I felt an uneasiness until we had shared him. What I want to say is extraordinarily like what he says. He is the only one of the modern philosophers who has anything of that sort to say."