BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, [8 MAY 1913]
BRACERS 17899. ALS. Morrell papers #768, Texas. SLBR 1: #205
Edited by N. Griffin. Proofread by A. Duncan and K. Blackwell

Thursday aftn.1^, 2

My Darling Love

I have no letter yet from Paris, which hardly surprises me — possibly there will be one tonight, but I may not be able to write then because of my evening. I have got on with my writing — I find it all flows out, evenly and smoothly, properly arranged, with masses of detail that I hardly realized were in my thoughts. And what pleases me is that it is all so simple that Julian could understand it! No doubt it will get harder afterwards, but I have long thought that philosophers are obscure because they are confused, and that the subject can be made easy to understand, tho’ not easy to do. I am delighted with what I have done, and if I can go on so it will be excellent. It is extraordinary the relief of getting it out — I believe now I can go straight on till it is finished, without pause or obstacle. There will be an introductory chapter, which I shall probably leave to the last — the first substantial chapter, which I have nearly finished, is called “Preliminary description of Experience”. Then I shall set to work to refute James’s theory that there is no such thing as consciousness, then the idealist theory that there is nothing else. Then I shall classify cognitive relations to objects — sense, imagination, memory. Then I shall come on to belief, error, etc., then to inference; then finally to “construction of the physical world” — time, space, cause, matter. If I go on on the scale on which I have begun, it will be quite a big book — 500 pages of print I should think. It is all in my head, ready to be written as fast as my pen will go. I feel as happy as a king. If I write 10 pages a day it will take 50 days — so it should be nearly finished when you come home. I want to do the popular lectures3 while you are in London — it is such a help to be seeing you constantly for that sort of writing.

Nothing else has occurred to me. Did you see the suffragettes tried to blow up St. Paul’s and only failed by accident?4

I am afraid my letters will be dull while my writing goes well — it is a dream, a delirium, so that casual events grow dim. But my love does not grow dim — the thought of you never leaves me for a moment Dearest. I wonder how you are and where you are and whether J. is well and everything. You never told me what to give J. for her birthday. Goodbye my Darling. I love you with all my soul.

Your
B

• 1

  [document] Document 000768. Proofread against a colour scan of the original.

• 2

  [envelope] A circled “768”. The Lady Ottoline Morrell | Hôtel Riche-Mont | Lausanne. | Switzerland. Pmk: CAMBRIDGE 3.15 | 8 MAY 13

• 3

  I want to do the popular lectures The Lowell Lectures he was to give in Boston. He originally planned to give them on “The Place of Good and Evil in the Universe” but this was vetoed by the organizers since the terms of the bequest under which the Lowell Lectures were funded forbade lectures on religious topics. In the end he gave them on “Our Knowledge of the External World”. They were the fullest statement of his thinking on the problem of matter at this time.

• 4

  suffragettes tried to blow up St. Paul’s and only failed by accident On 7 April a cleaner found a bomb, wrapped in a WSPU newspaper, by the bishop’s throne in the cathedral.