BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, [18 AUG. 1911]
BRACERS 17254. ALS. Morrell papers #173, Texas
Proofread by K. Blackwell et al.

Ipsden1^, 2
Friday night.

My Darling

I have at last a really clear vision of Prisons. I have just finished writing out a long abstract. Chap I The Nature and value of religion. Religion provides worship, acquiescence, love. Some discussion of nature of worship. Contemplation, to a great extent, provides all 3. Must learn to view things in regard to which we can act as we should view things in regard to which we cannot act. This requires a discipline, through contemplation where action is impossible. This discipline in following chapters. Chap II. The world of universals. Will deal with mathematics etc., showing their value. Chap III The physical world. Deals with the empire of matter, the immensity of space, and the beauty of nature. Chap IV. The Past. Here objects contemplated are of same sort as those in regard to which we have to act, but being past we see them without distinction. Value of history. At this point, the preliminary discipline is supposed finished, and we apply contemplation to purify emotion and action. Chap V Contemplation and the Emotions Chap VI Contemplation and Action Chap VII Union with the universe. These chapters will merely expand what I wrote before; I think the last might actually be what I wrote before, which sums up the whole.3 I don’t know what to call the book. “On contemplative freedom” or “The Religion of Contemplation”? The Vision is very strong in me tonight — the night is unbelievably beautiful and the wind is full of mystic wonder.

I finished my last Chapter of the S.S.4 before tea, and sent it to be typed. It was not so good as it ought to be, but I didn’t see how to improve it. I don’t think it was bad, but it was rather too short. I took some sentences on Contemplation out of the Prisons MS, and the denunciation of those who make man the measure of all things.

After tea I went to see the lodgings at Checkendon, which will do very well. They are near Stoke Row, so I shan’t ever have to pass through Checkendon, which is a comfort. I shall be there from 23rd to 8th.

I wish I were not going away, so that I could begin to write on Prisons at once. But I dare say it will be all the better for waiting. Tonight I am tired but very much alive. What an odd thing the creative impulse is. I find that every kind of emotion stimulates it, tho’ different creations come from different emotions. Only love makes me capable of saying anything about human life; otherwise I feel it too bad to say anything about, and despair drives me to purely abstract topics.

Today it occurred to me that the same impartiality of mind which, in thought, is love of truth, is justice in action and universal love in emotion. Plato, by the way, is quite hopeless on justice — his definition in Book IV seems to me to have no merits.

I suppose by now you are back at Peppard — I hope not too tired to feel the beauty of the night. Oh dear, I wish I were with you. Saturday, Sunday, Monday — three eternities. Dearest, my whole soul is with you every moment and my life is utterly bound up in yours. I did not know any one could give me so much — I did not know you could till this last month. Goodnight my heart. All my love goes out to you.

B.

• 1

  [document] Document 000173. Proofread against a colour scan of the original.

• 2

  [envelope] A circled “173”.

• 3

  I have … vision of Prisons … the whole. This outline of Prisons is in Papers 12: 98–9 as well as in Ronald W. Clark, The Life of Bertrand Russell (London: Cape and Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1975), p. 160.

• 4

  last Chapter of the S.S. Chap. XV, “The Value of Philosophy”.